


corvus oculum corvi non eruit

by devicing



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: F/M, Fire Emblem AU, M/M, TW Emetophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-04
Updated: 2018-03-10
Packaged: 2019-03-26 19:55:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 25,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13864884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devicing/pseuds/devicing
Summary: Their first meeting had set a precedent for most of their meetings to come, with an arrow lodged only a scant few inches away from Momota’s face and Ouma perched and looming on an overhead balcony like the Fell Dragon of legend himself.“Sorry, hero,” he’d said, another bolt already nocked and at the ready. “But this bounty’s already been claimed.”[Fire Emblem AU]





	1. part i

**Author's Note:**

> My last NDRv3 fic wasn’t an overly convoluted AU, which is baffling to me, so months later here I am to remedy that with this overly convoluted Fire Emblem AU. Elements of this universe are taken from classic FE games, but—being the needlessly extra human being that I am—I decided to go ahead and make up an entirely new plot with [whatdidshedraw](http://archiveofourown.org/users/whatdidshedraw) instead of just hopping on the back of an existing FE plot. 
> 
> Might expand on this universe with other character stories if this goes well? Who knows!

****  
  
  
_**Corvus oculum corvi non eruit**_

_A crow does not pluck out the eyes of another crow; “honor among thieves”_

 

 

In the heat of battle, it’s hard to register more than single sensations at a time:

_ The warm, worn leather of his sword grip against his sweaty palms.  _

_ The coppery sting of blood hanging heavy in the air.  _

_ The whistle of an arrow as it sings past his ear. _

It’s so easy to get lost to well-honed instincts in the thick of battle that, at times, thoughts and realizations seem to lag ages behind their catalysts.

Times like now, Momota thinks, as he stares down at the crumpled body of not one, but _two_ enemy soldiers at his feet. 

The first man is familiar enough; a lance-wielding sentinel who’d been giving him a _damn_ hard time with his long reach until the guy had glanced unsuccessfully off Momota’s pauldron. It’d been easy enough to close the distance between them after that.

The second is… less familiar. Momota crouches down to get a better look. The soldier’s eyes are blown wide as they gaze unseeing at something in the distance. His sword—a thick, well forged blade that glints in the waning light—lies limp between his fingers. Blood trails sluggishly out past the arrow buried four-fingers deep into his skull. 

Somewhere off beyond the weathered castle walls, he still hears the echoes of clashing swords, which means the battle isn’t won yet. Momota offers a hasty prayer up to the Cosmos Dragon and makes to hurry off, but as he turns, something catches his eye. 

Perched high atop a crumbling parapet—bow still drawn and one hand hovering limply in the empty air—is a very familiar face.

Momota grimaces, raising a hand to shield his eyes from the sun looming low in the sky. Details from earlier begin to make sense, like puzzle pieces coming together, though their outcome isn’t one he’s too fond of.  “If you think this means I owe you anything, you’ve got another thing coming,” he calls up to the archer above him. 

Ouma, against all odds, remains silent. Like a marionette creaking to a start, he slowly drops his arms, but his face stays uncharacteristically tight, gaze focused somewhere elsewhere.

“Because I _don’t_ ,” Momota adds somewhat awkwardly in the silence. “Owe you anything, I mean. I could have taken that guy!”

It’s only then that Ouma’s ink-dark gaze seems to drift back to the present. It catches on Momota in an instant, and he braces for the oncoming snark but something is… off. Missing. Instead of his usual mockery, Ouma’s mouth forms a taut line and he stares down at Momota with a strange sort of look in his eye. 

In return, Momota feels himself parrot the frown back at him, head knocking to the side. “What?” he asks, still erring on the side of caution but too curious to hold back. “Nothing to say? No rubbing it in my face about how you got the guy first? How you stole my kill?”

The trickster’s expression abruptly sours. His brow dips down sharply and his nostrils flare, enough to startle Momota a step back. But he seems to catch himself, and it’s all gone in an instant. His tight frown easily curls into a poisonous sneer as he tips his nose up to the sky. “No, I think you and this whole Crusade have far too great a lead on that for me to _ever_ catch up.”

With that, he turns on his heel and, like always, vanishes into the shadows before Momota can get another word in edgewise. 

Left alone and unsatisfied in the derelict remains of the castle courtyard, Momota lets loose a cathartic stream of curses before sheathing his sword and rushing after the sounds of battle further off. 

Much later, as he rejoins Akamatsu and Gonta on the front lines, it occurs to him that—as impossible as it might seem—Ouma almost looked something close to _scared_ back there in the courtyard, when he’d first looked down at him from his towering vantage point _._

There’s no way that could ever be right, though, so Momota quickly dismisses the thought and throws himself with reckless abandon into the fray.

 

* * *

 

Their first meeting had set a precedent for most of their meetings to come, with an arrow lodged only a scant few inches away from Momota’s face and Ouma perched and looming on an overhead balcony like the Fell Dragon of legend himself.

“Sorry, hero,” he’d said, another bolt already nocked and at the ready. “But this bounty’s already been claimed.” 

There hadn’t been much else Momota could do but wait in the open doorway, hands raised, as the outlaw’s masked underlings had melted out of the shadows towards their awaiting spoils. The castle’s lord—a portly nobleman who had a habit of letting tax funds mysteriously slip through the official channels—lay slumped and still across his ornate writing desk. Further behind him had been several hefty chests lined up in a row along the far wall.

Momota remembers eyeing them hungrily and cursing every single castle guard that had held him up just long enough for someone else to steal his chance. He also remembers his complete bafflement when the masked bandits had skipped over the chests entirely. 

“I mean, if _you_ want to have fun lugging those past the remaining guards, be my guest,” Ouma had said as he’d strolled over and plucked the ornate rings off the nobleman’s fat fingers, one by one. “It won’t be long before the rest of the royal guard hears about this mess and swoops in, but I’m sure that you can just muscle your way through that pesky problem. It’s what you and your little ragtag team usually do, right?” 

“I dunno, why don’t you come over here and find out?” Momota had spit, only held back by a second bowman who had taken her leader’s place as marksman.

Ouma had turned a sly eye on him at that. “Think I’ll pass. You have to understand, I’m not one for brute force.”

With that he’d swept a handful of letters and parchment off the desk and tucked them into a satchel at his side. The other lackeys had done much the same, snatching books off the shelves and scrolls from every corner of the room. Then one by one his seedy band of thieves had disappeared back into the shadows until there was no one left in the room but the two of them and the last remaining archer. 

“You’re a coward,” Momota had sniped when Ouma drew close enough to hear him during his final sweep of the room.

He’d flicked Momota’s nose and and said, “And you, Momota Kaito, are a backwater farm boy trying to play hero because maybe then you can feel like your parents died for some greater purpose after all.” Then he’d grinned. “See how tired and boring labels can be?”

Momota had blanched. He’d never told the outlaw his name, let alone his life story.

“ _Per aspera ad astra_ ,” the little mongrel had mocked with a wave of his ring-adorned fingers before casting himself back through the study’s large, open window.

And then they were gone, every single one of them. Soon Maki and the rest of Momota’s reinforcements had come and together they’d dragged the gold out from under the nose of the (miraculously unconscious, not dead) noble’s nose. Later that night, when the last of the chests had been dropped into the town square and the blood had been washed off their hands, the rest of his cabal had turned to Momota with a salute.

“ _Per aspera ad astra_ ,” they’d cried, just like they’d done at every mission’s end for years now, sounding as proud as ever.

That evening, Momota had trudged off to the closest tavern with a scowl on his face and the sour pang of shame in his gut.

 

* * *

 

The castle (or at least what had been left of it to begin with) is theirs by sundown. While its certainly seen better days, it’s still a victory and it’s _theirs_ , marking yet another step forward on their steady march towards the Empire’s capital. Akamatsu says as much from atop her steed as she lifts her silver lance high into the fading sunset to a sea of raucous applause. 

In the afterglow, Iruma demands a feast to celebrate the victory, and with Toujou happy to take care of the preparations, the rest of their little rebellion scatters off to explore their new surroundings and set up camp. Momota busies himself by messily scrawling a few updates to be sent to his far-scattered comrades until the dinner bell summons them all back to the mess hall.

With all those letters out of the way, his mind comes back to the other issue at hand.

“I don’t get his game,” he mutters around the spoon in his mouth, head propped up in the palm of his hand.

Saihara, beside him, follows the line of his glare and asks, “Ouma-kun, again?”

Across the dusty rows of tables, Gonta is frantically scrambling to get out of his armor, which is only making it harder for Kiibo and Iruma to loosen the straps holding it all together. Someone’s yelling something about a rat and tight spaces, and in the middle of it all Ouma—the little hellion— _oohs_ and _ahs_ at the spectacle without offering a lick of help. More than likely he’d started the whole fiasco to begin with.

“Trying to guess his game is a lost cause if I ever saw one,” Akamatsu says with a smile around a mouthful of stew. “Especially from you. Maybe try again when you drag your head back down from where it’s always stuck up in the stars.” 

She gently jabs her spoon into the hollow of his cheek and Momota sputters, batting it away. “Why’s he even here? All he ever does is mock us, scare us, or torment us!”

“Oh please,” she huffs, rolling her eyes. “If you can find us a better lock-pick by the time we reach the city limits—and the _infamously_ impenetrable walls that surround them, mind you—then be my guest.”

Momota drags a hand down his face. “No, I mean… why does he even _stay_? He’s always on his high horse about how stupid he thinks this whole undertaking is, so why doesn’t he just leave? What’s his end game?”  
  
Akamatsu shrugs. “I don’t think that really matters in the end, as long as he’s true to his word and holds up his end of the bargain.”

“But that’s what I’m getting at!” Momota exclaims, shaking his spoon in her face for emphasis. “Since when has he ever been _truthful_ about anything?”

“Momota,” she groans. “Don’t be so dramatic. It’s _fine_.”

“It’s _suspicious_ , is what it is, and I don’t trust it.”

Saihara stirs at his bowl thoughtfully and says, “He bears the Brand, just like the rest of us. That’s not something a simple lie could cover, nor is it something he can just walk away from.” 

The two of them both quiet at that. As if on cue, Akamatsu lifts a hand to gently brush the mark tucked into the hollow of her throat and Momota does the same, fingers itching over the stylized dragon that curls across his left palm. He traces the smooth, raised edge of it and frowns. “Okay, but has anyone ever seen his _up_ _close_? It could be a fake for all we know, because there’s no way in _hell_ Evren would ever have picked _him!_ ”

“I have,” Saihara says, plainly.  


Momota narrows his eyes. “Oh, really? When?”

Saihara gives him a flat look, then puts his spoon down and reaches into the satchel at his side to draw out a familiar leather book. He flips through a few pages, tracing the lines until his finger comes to a stop. “ _7th day of Avistym, three days march from Wyvern’s Pass. Engaged Imperial forces at a routine checkpoint blocking the path. No casualties, three injuries. Chabashira Tenko: bruising to the torso, healed by Yonaga Angie. Cleared for battle. Ouma Kokichi,_ ” He pauses to catch Momota’s eye over the lip of the book. _“Wound to the left abdomen, vulnerary and further bandaging administered by Saihara Shuuichi. Examination also showed signs of exhaustion/poor sleep. Placed on bedrest for thr—“_

“Fine, fine, I get it! So you keep good records!” Momota grouses as Akamatsu tries and fails to hide her laughter in her closed fist. “But _still—_ “

Saihara smiles softly, snapping the tome closed with a crisp _thump_. “I promise you, I saw the Brand and it is just as real as yours, or mine, or anyone else’s among us.”

Shoulders raised, Momota opens his mouth to say something, but… then he closes it. He does this a few more times, but Saihara’s soft, amused smile stops him in his place at every one. With a heavy sigh, he deflates and slumps down against the dusty tabletop. “ _Fine_. I’ll take your word for the Brand, Shuuichi, but something still feels fishy here. You didn’t see him earlier. Somethings _up_ , and today’s battle proved it.”

Saihara’s expression falters at that, dipping into something pensive. “He didn’t seem any different from usual at the meeting this morning.”

“That’s for sure,” Akamatsu agrees, sarcasm laid on thickly. Then she pushes her empty bowl away and leans her elbow into its vacated space. “Look, I get that he’s a brat, but why are you so hung up on him in particular? I can tell you for certain that the more you let his antics get to you, the more he’ll continue to pester you.”

Momota gapes at her, and Saihara winces back from where he’d been trying in vain to signal her to let the issue drop. “Why? _Why?_ I’ll tell you _why!_ He’s a no-good, dishonorable crook with no morals and no consideration for anything around him, that’s why! Him and every last one of that stupid, slimy network of his!” He slams his open palm down on the table with a satisfying _thwack_. 

“DICE,” Saihara inserts when Akamatsu glances over at him for elaboration. “They have history.”

She cocks an unimpressed brow back at Momota. “And what do you suppose the Imperial Army had to say about you and _Ad Astra_?”

“That’s…,” Momota starts, then trails off in a wince, “… _different_ , okay? 

“Really? Because as I remember, both of your entourages were featured front and center on every wanted board in every city, port, and barrack this side of the eastern sea.” 

It’s sometimes easy to forget that not long ago, Akamatsu herself had been counted among the Imperial Army’s ranks. Funny what a mysterious voice in your head and a dragon’s brand on your skin can do to a person. Momota scowls, “I said it’s _different,_ okay? For starters, at least _Ad Astra_ and I stand for something! The only thing DICE stands for is wreaking havoc across the continent and having a grand old time doing it!”

“Tell that to the southern trade guilds.”

Momota sputters. “They were short-changing half the population on their goods! What’s one burnt-down guild hall compared to the wellbeing of most of the rest of the nation?”

Akamatsu continues to look unimpressed. 

He continues, unruffled by her skepticism. “But see, _that’s_ what I mean! Sure, it was kind of a mess, but at least _we’re_ out there and honest about what we intend to do! We don’t go sneaking around in the shadows like gutter-rats, exploiting people with rumors and blackmail like common crooks! That’s underhanded and gross and I won’t stand for it!”

“You don’t have a problem with that kind of strategy when Hoshi-kun’s doing it. Or Harukawa-san for that matter, and she’s a member of _Ad Astra_ herself,” Saihara says, nodding at the pair of assassins, currently picking at their food in silence a table over.

Momota flings his hands in the air. “Yeah, but… but that’s—“

“— _different_ ,” Saihara and Akamatsu both finish for him in eerie tandem.

Momota’s mouth snaps shut.

“Rivalry among thieves,” Akamatsu says with a wry smile as she gathers up her dishes.

“I believe it’s ‘ _honor_ among thieves,’ actually,” Saihara interjects, doing the same.

Momota gapes at them as they walk off, feeling his face begin to burn in his irritation. 

It _is_ different! He knows how to get a good read on people. How the hell do they think he built _Ad Astra_ up from the ground in the first place? Good instincts and good people, _that’s_ how! He knows people, and he knows Ouma, and he knows Ouma’s one of the worst kinds of people. His instincts are good ones!

Just to prove it, he turns back across the room for the kind of evidence to prove his point that he’s sure he’ll find. After all, when is the little rat _not_ making a mess of his surroundings? 

Ouma is, however, _conveniently_ missing from his spot at the table. Only a practically-untouched bowl of stew remains next to the struggling Gonta as evidence he’d been there at all.

“Of- _fucking_ -course,” Momota mutters to himself as he slams his palms down on the table and pushes himself to standing. He tosses his dishes into the wash basin—causing Tenko to squawk as the water splashes up at her where she’d been scrubbing away—and storms off out of the hall and into the night. That might have been someone calling after him, but he doesn’t stop to check.

He’s got a gutter-rat to hunt down, after all.

 

* * *

 

Ouma’s recruitment goes like this.

It begins with a desert stronghold, a pirate king, and a lost tome Shirogane believes holds the key to the ritual for the sacred dragon Evren’s rebirth.

It also begins with a knife held to Saihara’s throat and the entire party at a standstill.

“Alright ya little shits,” the pirate king’s voice gleefully booms through the hall. “Ya might’ve taken out the front guard, but I’ve got plenty more grunts where they came from! If ya come on out now, I might even let this one live to see the rest of ya torn to shreds!”

Momota clicks his tongue and glares down at the guy through the narrow partitions of the banister where he’s stuck hiding on the upper balcony. “Where the hell’s Hoshi?” he hisses. “Wasn’t he supposed to get his ass up here once we cleared out the top floor?”

Maki, next to him, tugs on the end of her long pigtail. She’d otherwise look perfectly composed if Momota didn’t know her so well. “Saihara was the one who was supposed to signal the rear guard’s advance.” 

Momota utters a short curse and pokes his head over the balcony to survey the scene again. A hand pushes his head down before he can see too much. 

“Your hair’s gonna get us caught,” Yumeno offers as an explanation.

“And what about your hat?” he fires back.

She considers his statement for a moment, then replies, “I'll just cast an invisibility spell on it.”

Momota balks. “When the hell did you pick up a tome like that?” he demands.

“Tenko doesn’t think you should waste such an important spell just yet!” Chabashira pipes up over him from Yumeno’s other side. “It could be extremely helpful further down the line!”

“That’s if it even _exists_ —!”

“All of you,” Maki hisses, drawing their attention. “Do you want to be spotted?”

They quiet down. Momota shuffles back to her side, careful not to let his sword sheath drag against the stone walkway. “Sorry, it’s just… I can’t stand just sitting around while Shuuichi’s helpless down there! Can't you just throw a knife at the guy or something?”  
  
“And risk hitting Saihara?” she asks, eyebrow raised.

He frowns. “A distraction then. Yumeno!” He turns to look at the tiny mage. “You’ve got fire magic, right?” 

After a pause, Yumeno pulls a telltale red grimoire out from the bag at her side. When she flips the pages open to show him, however, they’re entirely blank. “Sorry, but I’m all out of Bolganone spells. And Elfires.” She shuffles through a few more pages, then stops. “Oh, I _could_ try out a Meteor spe—“

Chabashira quickly moves to close the tome with a nervous laugh. “Tenko thinks we should _probably_ leave that one for another time, though she’s sure it would look amazing!”

“So we’re just stuck here then,” Momota seethes.

Maki hums next to him, sounding just as discontented. “Seems like it.”

Suddenly, a new voice adds to the scene below. “Boss, there’s more of them coming in from the western store room!”

Momota tenses up immediately and Maki and Yumeno do the same, even as Chabashira to the far right thoughtfully strokes one of her long ears and mutters, “Wait, _western_?”

“Well stop screwin’ around and go drag ‘em out here!” the pirate yells, hoisting Saihara closer to his chest and the knife ever closer to his neck. “Ya hear that, ya damn vermin? If we find a single one of ya with weapons drawn, yer friend here’s going to be as dead as yer fake fuckin’ Dragon!”

“Alright, screw this,” Momota says, getting his knees under himself. 

“Momota,” Maki grabs the hem of his gambeson and tugs him back none-too-gently. “What in _Evren’s_ name do you think you can do?”

“Well doing anything beats doing nothing!”

Maki goes stock still, her gaze darkening. “Do I have to remind you what your carelessness could mean for Saihara?”

“I’ll…,” Momota starts, grasping at straws. “ _I’ll_ be the distraction. I can use the banner here to slide down to the ground, and when he’s focused on me, then you can throw a knife!”

She yanks harder on the gambeson, causing Momota to stumble back down onto his backside. He always forgets how damn strong she can be. “You don’t know how he’ll react. He could slit Saihara’s throat from the start and then where would we be?”

“I don’t know!” Momota spits out, not backing down from the challenge in her menacing glare. “But I can’t just sit here anymore!” 

With that he pushes up onto his knees once more, tugging the fabric out of Maki’s hands and bracing both his own on the stone bannister. Chabashira gasps and Yumeno makes a startled sound beside her. When he turns his head briefly to assure them that everything will be fine, he finds their eyes trained somewhere behind him. 

“Excuse me, hero,” a voice simpers in his ear just before something gently thumps against his back. Momota shocks still. Recognition stirs in his gut, but he can’t quite place why. Out of the corner of his eye, he traces the smooth curve of a bow held within the hand of his mysterious assailant from where it comes to rest against his shoulder. The bowman’s index finger curls out to rest across the line of his clavicle and soon Momota watches as a long, sleek arrow is nocked up atop it. 

He doesn’t dare move as the arrow lines itself up at the corner of his eye. He swallows dryly. The arrowhead may not be pointed at him, sure, but there’s still something threatening about the damn thing being so close to his face. Something stirs to his left. 

“Back away,” he hears Maki say in a low voice. It’s a tone that he hasn’t heard her use in a very long time—not since she gave up her old business and joined his—and it causes a nervous shudder to run down his spine. “ _Now_.”

“Harumaki,” he mutters in an attempt to calm her down before she can do anything rash.

The mysterious bow-slinger chuckles. His knuckles knead lightly against the back of Momota’s shoulders as they adjust their grip. “Goodness, your guard-dog has quite a growl. Is her bite just as bad?”

It’s then, with a sinking sense of dread and distaste, that Momota places the voice from a far off memory. It’s certainly not one of the pirates, or if it is, then he really needs to get better intel. His face twists into a scowl, “Mother _fuck_ –!”

“Ah-ah,” Ouma chides. The arrow tips off of his finger to pat Momota condescendingly across the cheek before it goes back to its perch. “I’d watch your language and your volume if I were you. I don’t think red is your tactician’s color, if you know what I mean.”

Momota bites back the litany of curses he’d much rather let fly and loosens his stiff shoulders. The little bastard’s right; he can’t fight back now, not with Shuuichi’s life on the line. “What the hell are you doing here?” he hisses instead.

“ _Language_ ,” Ouma says again with a sigh. “But what else should I have expected from a couple of reckless, hotheaded, mercenary thugs, am I right?” 

From the direction of his voice, the question is obviously directed towards Chabashira and Yumeno to the side, but Maki cuts in before either of them can speak. “Do you want to die, gutter-rat? Back. Off.”

Ouma snorts, followed by the tense twang of the bow string being pulled taut. “Cute, but considering I’m your last option here, you might want to wait until after I’ve saved your skins. But it’s your call, I suppose!”

“Save us?” Momota hears Chabashira ask. “You’re not…?”

“We can handle this,” Maki says darkly. 

“Now, see, I could have _sworn_ I heard you saying that you _couldn’t_ not even a minute ag—“

“So you were listening in on us?”

“Uh, yeah? That’s kind of our job—y’know, from one spy to another. Or should I say _ex_ -spy in your ca—“

A sharp hiss of breath to Momota’s left. “You really do have a death wish, don’t you gutter-ra—!”

The bowstring somehow pulls even tighter, singing out its protests against the strain. Momota instinctively tips his head aside and winces back from the sound of it. The others seem to take the hint to shut up as well.

Ouma leans further forward, this time bracing his knee against the center of Momota’s back and squashing the swordsman further up against the stone bannister. Momota grunts his disapproval, but doesn’t dare do anything more considering the position he’s in. 

“Now I’d really appreciate it if you’d cut out the chit-chat. If I don’t focus, who knows _what_ could happen to your friend down there,” Ouma says, voice low, almost distracted. “Actually, I think we _all_ know…”

Momota’s lip curls, but he wills himself to stay perfectly still. His knuckles go white where they grip the railing with every ounce of self-restrained patience he has left. “Just take the damn shot before I throw you down there myself.”

Ouma breathes out a laugh—sounding like the cat that got the cream and then some—and says, just loud enough for Momota to hear, “Aye aye, captain.”

Then he sucks in a deep breath and cries, “Saihara-chan!”

Momota’s blood runs cold and time seems to fall into slow motion as Saihara tenses and the Pirate King turns, his eyes tipping up to their hiding spot.

And then, in the span of a single heartbeat, Ouma lets go and the arrow whistles past Momota’s ear to strike the pirate dead between the eyes.

Momota shoots up as soon as the man goes down. Saihara, thankfully, appears safe from where he’d stumbled a few feet forward, looking shaken but none the worse for wear. A long sigh rushes out of Momota, relief flooding him instantaneously. He doesn’t get to linger on the thought long, though, as the weight across his shoulders finally lifts. He feels fabric brush against his arm, but only manages to turn in time to catch a glimpse of the tail end of Ouma’s white, tattered tunic as it spills over the banister and disappears.

“Hey!” he barks, in almost perfect unison with Maki as she too stands up at his side. Ouma, however, has already slipped three-quarters of the way down the banner to the ground below. 

Momota acts before he can think. Even as Maki calls for him to stop, he digs his fist into the hanging fabric and throws himself over the railing after him. It’s slow going with his cumbersome leather armor, and his gloves are too worn to slide down the silken fabric easily, but he manages. Maybe Maki had been right—no matter how cool the image had seemed in his head, if he’d tried to scale down before, the chances of him making it to the pirate king in time to save Saihara would have been slim. Not impossible, but the risk had been there. 

_Reckless, hotheaded, mercenary thugs,_ his brain supplies. He scowls as he shuffles the rest of the way down.

Saihara is his first priority when his feet touch down on the ground, and enough of a distraction that he doesn’t notice the way the fabric had gotten caught in his greaves. He dashes forward, heedless of the rest of his squadron calling after him as the banner tears down from the rafters. They can go the long way around for all that he cares right now, he thinks as he goes, shaking the tangle of fabric out from the metal plates.

Saihara turns as he approaches, and as he does Momota’s hands latch onto his shoulders while his eyes dart to and fro, scanning for injuries. He’s got a nasty looking gash through his left coat sleeve—the arm he holds his tomes with, of _course_ —but his neck is thankfully unscathed. Saihara lets out a weak chuckle and reaches up his uninjured hand to pat Momota’s arm reassuringly. “I’m fine. The arrow got him before he could get me.”

Momota stops his frantic check and pulls his hands to clap them each to Saihara’s cheeks. Saihara gives him a startled look, face comically pressed together like that, but Momota speaks first. “You can’t _do_ that to us, Shuuichi!” he whines as he gently rocks his friend’s head back and forth. “What’s a leader without his second-in-command, huh?”

Saihara attempts a smile around his squished-up face. “I think Harukawa-san would take grievance with that statement.”

“I can have two second-in-commands if I want,” Momota replies with grin. He drops his hands to position them at his hips. “I’m the leader after all.”

Saihara shakes his head fondly, then turns his eyes up to the balcony. “They’ll most likely find Amami and his group on their way down. We should probably hurry, though.”

That brings Momota back to the moment. He perks up, scanning the room. His face falls back into its earlier scowl, “Yeah, that reminds me. Where the hell’d that damn pest Ouma get to?”

“That’s exactly why we need to get a move on,” Saihara calls, already moving towards the door in the far corner of the room. He gestures his good hand at the body of the pirate king as he passes, sending Momota a guilty smile. “Ah, would you do me a favor and tie him up for me? I won’t be of much use with only one arm.” He shrugs his limp arm helplessly.

Momota tilts his head in confusion. What use is there in tying up a dead body? He doesn’t get a chance to ask before Saihara disappears beyond the doorway. Shrugging to himself, he makes his way over to the prone figure. 

The first hint that something’s off is the suspicious lack of a blood pool. The second is the arrow, lying not in the man’s skull but a few feet from his legs. Momota scoops it up as he walks, turning it over in the dusty light. The wooden bolt smoothes out at the end, where instead of an arrowhead he finds a strange black, tar-like casing. When he prods at it with his finger, he feels its rubbery give. His brow furrows. 

The pirate bastard’s body is still motionless when he crouches down next to it. Curious, Momota pries his glove off with his teeth and presses the pads of his fingers to the man’s neck. Sure enough, there’s a weak but definitely-present pulse. He glances up at the guy’s slack face and there, right between the eyes, is the early coloring of a nasty bruise. 

Momota turns the man further onto his stomach and reaches back for the lead of rope strapped to his hip. He methodically loops it around the pirate’s crossed arms, but all the while he can’t shake the feeling that something is seriously off. He glances back at the arrow he’d dropped to his side. What the hell is the use of using a blunt in an active war zone? It’s probably just another one of Ouma’s tricks or pranks, he reasons. Or maybe he’d grabbed the wrong arrow. 

No use getting too caught up on it. Not when Momota has a chance of catching the guy and getting the answers out of him himself, anyway.

With that thought in mind, he gives the rope a final tug and heads off after his tactician.

As he begins to reach the end of the long hallway, another figure darts in ahead of him from a different path. He tenses, but it’s just Shirogane, who scurries up to the storeroom door and pushes it open without sparing even a glance in his direction. He slows to a jog and follows her through.

“Oh, thank goodness!” she exclaims, scurrying off towards the back corner. Momota tips his head to look past her as she goes and there, lounging in an plush armchair that’s seen better days, is Ouma. He has an old looking tome spread across his lap which he’d been scanning with a bored expression before the interruption. Now, he tips the same dull expression up at Shirogane as she hesitantly reaches out for the book. “I…,” she starts, voice wavering. “May I please take a look at that book?”

He regards her curiously but doesn’t immediately relinquish his hold. “Ehh?” he whines, “But I found it first! Finders keepers, right? This is a pirate stronghold, after all. That’s like the cardinal rule of pirating, y’know?” 

Her hands begin to nervously fidget where they linger in the air. “Y-Yes, but it’s… _very_ important to me—to _us_.”

“Really? This old thing?” He lifts the book up with one hand, letting it dangle open by its cover. He shakes it a few times for good measure. As dust spills from its pages and the leather binding pulls taut, Shirogane lets out a pained whine. 

“Ouma-kun.” Momota turns to the left, where Saihara is currently studying the bookshelf. After a beat of silence, he shoots Ouma a cryptic sort of look, which Ouma matches with his own. 

Something must happen in their unspoken stalemate, because Ouma lets out a long sigh and says, “Fine, it’s all gibberish anyway.” Then he lets go of the tome. Shirogane’s arms quickly shoot forward to catch it, and as she does she follows the momentum of it down to her knees where she huddles over, clutching the book tightly to her breast. Ouma, either satisfied or too bored with the development, hops out of the chair and over to Saihara. Momota takes his chance and makes a beeline for them.

“You!” he barks.

Ouma flashes him a grin, then ducks between Saihara and the bookshelf. He grips both sides of Saihara’s hips and breaks out in a watery sob. “Saihara-chan help! Your nasty guard-mutt is scaring me!”

Momota jerks to an abrupt stop. “ _Saihara-ch_ —? Wha… where the _hell_ do you get off being so chummy with _our_ tactician?”

Saihara sighs, using his good arm to try to pry the trickster’s spidery fingers from his cloak. “Momota-kun, calm down.”

Ouma ducks his head past Saihara’s large robes and grins. “We’re pen-pals.”

“ _What_?” Momota cries.

Across the room, Shirogane also seems to perk up. “What was that?”

“It’s true!” the little devil croons, nuzzling his head into Saihara’s side. “Your dear tactician and I have been exchanging steamy vows of love for weeks now!” He leers up at Momota, “How does it feel, finding out that you’ve been playing second fiddle to _me_ this whole time?”

“ _Sh-Shuuichi_?” Momota squawks.

“It’s nothing even remotely like that,” Saihara says, finally nudging Ouma away from his side. Ouma hops away with a self-satisfied grin, then settles for leaning back against the bookshelf. Saihara sighs at his antics, then continues. “It is true, however, that I’ve been keeping contact with DICE for some time now. Specifically, with Ouma-kun.”

“Why on earth would you do that?” Shirogane asks, watching him intently. Her nails anxiously pick at the leather cover of her tome.

Saihara glances over to her. “Based on intel I gathered from the southern port a few weeks ago, I knew there was no way our group of scarcely a dozen could take out the entire stronghold here. We needed aid and…,” he looks down at Ouma, who smiles beatifically back up at him. “…I happened to run into Ouma-kun.”

“And what a fortuitous case of happenstance that was!” Ouma chimes in. 

Momota feels his lip twitch into a snarl. “Happenstance my ass. You were spying on us, weren’t you?”

Ouma’s serene smile turns into a smirk. “What, one of the so-called Branded shying away from the idea of a little divine intervention? How unlike a member of Evren’s Crusade.” He slants his eyes towards Shirogane. “That is what you lot are calling yourselves, right? Or is that just what the survivors of your escapades have decided to name you?”

The girl shrinks back, so Momota intervenes. “What the hell’s it to you, anyway?”

Ouma affects a gasp. “Saihara-chan, you didn’t tell them?” Then, with another watery sniffle, “Have you been keeping me a secret from them this entire time? I never thought I would end up the jilted lover, spurned and cast off to the side!”

Saihara sighs, bringing his uninjured hand up to rub at his temples. “Ouma-kun agreed to stage a secondary attack on the castle. After we’d distracted the Pirate King’s main forces, a handful of DICE’s members would come in from the western front and take out the rest of his guard. It appears he kept up his end of the bargain, thankfully.” He sends a grateful—if not weary—smile down at Ouma.  
  
Momota slams his hands down on the large wooden table beside him. “Okay, but why? What the hell do you get out of this?”

Ouma brings a hand up to his chin as he reclines back against the books. He begins to tick off his list with his fingers, “A few gold pieces, a couple books and maps to add to my collection back at HQ, a nifty pirate hat, and… oh, _what_ was that last one…” He gazes up at the ceiling in thought for a beat, face scrunched up in thought, before he gasps. “Oh right!”

Then he draws his left hand down to tug the fabric of his checkered scarf out of the way. There, emblazoned across the curve of his collarbone, is the dark, curling mark of Evren, the Cosmos Dragon herself. 

He smirks, “And an official welcome into your fancy little Dragon club, of course.”

 

* * *

 

The storerooms are barren. The dusty throne room similarly so. Even their shoddily-made campsite in the courtyard is empty save Shinguuji, who continues to steadily gaze into the firelight, but informs Momota that no one’s come by the tents since sundown.

Momota feels his already-strained patience slipping with each location he ticks off. 

This would be difficult enough as it was in a _familiar_ place, but they’ve had this ramshackle castle for all of a few hours at best. While he was cutting down Imperial soldiers outside the grounds, Ouma was no doubt weaseling his way into every nook and cranny this place had to offer. Figures. That’s the problem with rogues and spies: they’re all very good at making themselves very difficult to find at the very worst of times.

Thankfully, with all his days spent around Maki, Momota’s at least picked up a few common habits of the trade, which is how he eventually spots a conspicuously open window on his second sweep of the castle’s east wing. The dusty bootprints left behind on the ledge beyond it confirm his suspicions. 

“Gotcha,” he says with a grin.

He’s bigger than Ouma by good deal and his leather armor is a lot bulkier, so it takes him longer than he’d like to admit, but eventually he manages to fit himself through the opening. The ledge is barely a hands-width wide, but the cobbled stone walls make for decent enough hand grips. When he feels he’s got his bearings, he slowly begins inching along, careful not to look too far beyond his toes to the ground below. It’s a long way down, after all. 

He rounds a corner and finds that the ledge widens a bit, extending into a stone archway that leads up over one of the carriage paths below and towards a corner of the castle gardens. Lo and behold, the bootprints follow the arc of it up and over.

That nimble little gutter-rat. “You couldn’t have made this easy, could you?” Momota sighs, lowering himself into a crouch and gripping the sides of the narrow arch. He’s come this far, though; might as well see this game of self-imposed cat and mouse through to the end. 

The archway miraculously holds his weight as he scooches inch-by-inch across it and to the other side. Once there, he hops down onto the garden wall, then surveys the area beyond. The torchlight from the castle’s outer sconces only reach so far, doing more harm than good. He holds a hand up to block the light and let his eyes adjust. 

The garden… isn’t much to look at. Of course, Amami had said to expect as much, with it being one of the less active Imperial outposts. Something about a dead, unmarried nobleman and _eminent domain_ , whatever that was. Not much reason for soldiers to keep up on the gardening, no matter how little action the castle got. What it means for Momota, though, is a lot of overgrown rose bushes and unpruned trees. A veritable nightmare for finding Ouma.

He sits down on the lip of the wall and scrubs a hand across his chin. Maybe calling it quits is the best option? No, the dinner conversation is still too fresh on his mind, and he hasn’t been able to get that weird confrontation he’d had with Ouma out of his head all day. What even was that? If he doesn’t follow through on his pursuit now, the drive will be gone by morning, and he can’t have that. He’s pissed off and determined and just a _little_ bit curious as to what could have driven Ouma so far into hiding. 

Come to think of it, why _had_ he run off anyway? Yeah, Ouma had been an ass earlier, but no more than usual. Even _he_ tends to stick close to camp this late at night. If anyone’s sneaking around behind the backs of the night guard, it’s most likely Shinguuji (off on his creepy night-time strolls) or Harumaki (even if she thinks Momota doesn’t know). Ouma, on the other hand, is usually far too interested in poking through Shuuichi’s journals or poking fun around the campfire. Momota would know. He’s usually either dragging the little hellion away from the former or being dragged into the latter. 

But Ouma had left the mess hall before dinner had even ended. 

(“Gonta’s sorry,” Gonta had told him earlier, the squirrel (not rat) from earlier perched pleasantly on his shoulder, “He doesn’t remember if he saw Ouma or not after he finally rescued this little fellow.”

“I think you mean after _we_ rescued _you,_ dick-for-brains,” Iruma had grumbled around an obscenely large mouthful of bread. “Listen, we started eating, got to talking about the fight today, and then all of a sudden the rotten little pube shoved _this_ mess into our hands and fucked off to who-fucking- _knows_ -where the second we had our backs turned.”  
  
Kiibo had nodded thoughtfully, “Which was strange because he barely touched his dinner.”

Iruma had tweaked one of his pointed ears at that and let out a loud guffaw at the manakete’s noise of protest. “Ha! Who even cares about that! Means there’s more for me in the end!” Then, after tearing into another bite of bread, “Sorry, but we ain’t got shit to tell you.”

Kiibo, with one hand protectively cupped around his ear, had just shrugged in his apologetic agreement.)

Suspicious. This whole situation is suspicious as hell and Momota won’t stop until he finally gets some answers out of the guy. He swears it on the Cosmos Dragon’s name: he’s getting to the bottom of this little pest once and for all.

And speak of the devil, at that very moment the telltale _thwak_ of an arrow sounds from somewhere not too far beyond the tree-line to his left.

Momota’s face breaks out into a wide grin. He plants his hands on the lip of the wall and slips down from his perch, letting himself fall the last few feet to the ground without making too much sound. The garden floor is covered in brambles, but his grieves thankfully protect him from the worst of it. Another dull _thwack_ means Ouma still hasn’t heard him coming. Good. He carefully wades through the thorny mess towards the tree line, hand on his sword hilt to keep the metal from rattling against his belt. Each step he takes he makes sure to avoid any snapping twigs or rustling branches.  
  
Harumaki would be proud, he thinks. Maybe. It’s sometimes hard to tell with that girl.

He spots a tree up ahead—its trunk thick and gnarled enough to act as perfect cover—and ducks behind it. With one eye he peers around it. 

Even without the light from the castle’s torches, the small opening in the underbrush is perfectly illuminated by the moonlight. In the center of it is Ouma, bow at the ready with one hand gently brushing the line of his jaw. Next to him is a makeshift quiver, cobbled together out of what looks to be an old, rusted sconce jammed into the soil. At the far side of the clearing is another large oak tree. Almost a dozen arrows are littered through its thick trunk. 

As Momota marvels at the scene, another arrow cuts through the night and hits the tree with a solid, resounding _thwack._ It hits the side, just barely lodging itself at the curve of the trunk. Momota frowns. That seems… unlike him. Even though he’s only been traveling with him for a few weeks at best, Ouma’s proven himself to be nothing if not _deadly_ accurate. The array of arrows speaks otherwise. 

Across the way, the archer breathes out, but his bow doesn’t drop. Neither do his stiff shoulders. He stares, unblinking at the target, expression completely neutral, void of any emotion.

Momota has a weird case of déjà vu.

He leans back to fit himself closer to his own tree when his foot hits a snag. A branch snaps under his boot sole. 

In the blink of an eye, Ouma moves. He jerks, bow skewing up towards the air as his back foot pivots him to face the noise. His free hand jumps for the quiver at his side, but hits only empty air. Still, it leaps for the bowstring out of habit, releasing it with a quick hiss of breath. The bowstring snaps lamely as Momota jerks back at nothing.

Then the moment is over. Ouma’s eyes are blown wide as they catch Momota’s own in the suddenly vacuous night.

A long, deathly-silent second passes before all the air rushes out of Momota and he jerks back to life. “ _Fucking_ _hell—_!” he chokes out, bracing a hand on the trunk beside him as his lungs try to remember how to breathe. “ _Careful_ with that thing, _gods_!” He tries to swallow down his racing heart, eyes trained down at the ground at Ouma’s feet.

After a long moment he hears a hitch of breath, then another. Soon, the silence is broken by the crisp, ugly bark of Ouma’s laughter howling wildly in the moonlight.

Momota looks up sharply. Ouma has his head tossed back, bow finally lowered to his side between limp fingers. His free hand presses against his forehead as he laughs and laughs. 

Momota feels himself begin to bristle. “It’s not funny, you little psycho! You could have fucking shot my head clean off!” With that he storms forward, trampling over a myriad of wildflowers and thorny vines. Ouma continues, without a care in the world. His eyes stay trained somewhere out beyond the stars. 

As Momota closes the distance between them, he reaches out for the little demon’s checkered scarf. Before his fingers can close around it, though, his hand is violently slapped away. The sound of it cracks like a whip lash through the still night air. 

In an instant, Ouma’s eyes are back on him. This close, Momota can’t avoid the chilling, ink-dark intensity of them. It freezes anything he’d planned to say dead in his throat.

Ouma takes one step back, stumbling slightly, then another. He sucks in long, deep breaths to fill his lungs—no doubt empty from his seemingly endless stream of laughter—but can’t seem to fill them. His eyes stay trained on Momota, and all at once Momota has a weird, sudden thought. 

That strange look, the one from earlier in the day in the castle’s courtyard; all of sudden he thinks of the right words to describe it.

Terrifying, and yet also absolutely terrified.

He stands frozen, transfixed by that haunting intensity, until Ouma sucks in another sharp breath. 

Then he bends over and is sick all over the garden floor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ouma’s reputation precedes him, on most occasions. With an organization like his, rumors tend to spread far and fast, paradoxically gaining more traction the less information there is. And DICE is good at making sure necessary information doesn’t fall upon the wrong ears. _Very_ good.

The unnecessary––often uninformed––information is free game, however. People will come up with the most interesting, juicy stories when there is a famine of solid facts. After all, who doesn’t like to spin a good yarn? What does it matter if the information is inaccurate, as long as it’s interesting? If anything, that usually works in DICE’s favor in the end, obfuscating the truth behind a haze of lies and gossip.

Ouma takes pride and pleasure in gathering up the scattered pieces of what the public whispers about him in the shadows. He revels in puzzling out the ways the truth has been twisted through lies and exposure. 

There’s one detail, however, that the rumors never get quite right.

Unlike the many, many stories that say otherwise, the truth of Ouma’s first kill goes like this.

 

* * *

 

At dawn, Saihara summons a handful of their crew (limited not to those of any particular importance, just those who’d been awake) to the lip of the long, sandstone ridge where they’d made their camp. The cliffside overlooks the wide expanse of the eastern valley. There, just barely visible in the distance, the turrets of a small castle crest the horizon.

“To get down into the valley with all of our equipment will take an hour or so, then it’ll be another few hours after that before we reach the guard’s perimeter,” Amami explains. He holds out his brass spyglass invitingly for anyone interested.

Saihara takes him up on the offer. He lifts it to his eye and mutters, “You know the area best. How many soldiers do you expect?”

Amami lets out a soft laugh, raising one hand to cradle the back of his neck. “Ah, it’s been at least a year since I was in these parts. At that time there were maybe… three, four dozen permanently stationed here? Of course, they weren’t too keen on me lurking around in their woods, as you can imagine, so I can’t be absolutely sure of those numbers.”

“Akamatsu-san?” Saihara says, turning to her. 

She hums, leaning further onto the hilt of her lance. “Sorry, but the farthest east I was ever stationed was the capital itself.”

“If I may interject,” comes Toujou’s voice from the fire pit. She’s paused half-way through the morning’s breakfast preparation. “Back in the capital, the Commandant would occasionally have me organize the budget filings when he was busy. If I recall correctly, the eastern outpost was always sent supplies in installments of exactly forty-three.”

Akamatsu beams. “Well that’s not so bad! They might round up their supplies, but they’d never under-order, right?”

Saihara continues to frown, absently tugging at the lip of his cowl. “Even so, we’ll still be outnumbered almost three-to-one.”

“So we take a split offensive,” Hoshi says. “The first group grabs their attention out front while the rest of us sneak into the castle and flank them from the inside.”

“That could prove risky,” Toujou interjects. 

Hoshi shrugs. “Only if the front group doesn’t hold up long enough or the second group doesn’t move fast enough.”

“That doesn’t make it sound any more convincing,” Akamatsu interjects. “Alright, so… maybe we move closer in and stakeout the area for a few days? Then we can make our move after we have a better understanding of the guards’ movements.”

“That could work,” Amami says appraisingly.

Toujou nods, “I agree. It’s best if we take some precautions, lest we be too rash.”

Unable to hold back any longer, Ouma lets out a long, exaggerated sigh. “Boooooring,” he moans, causing the gaggle of idiots to look up to his perch in the tree above them. He slumps further down onto the branch until his face is smushed against it and his legs and arms dangle pathetically from either side. “I’m getting tired of this disgusting, roughing-it lifestyle. If I have to go through another week of tent pitching and river bathing and a certain pig talking about her nasty foot bunions, I might as well just throw myself right off the side of this cliff!”

Akamatsu glares at him, digging her lance deeper into the dirt. “As much as we’d all like a hot bath right now, being careful and taking our time is a _little_ more important.”

“No,” Saihara says, drawing the group’s attention. At some point he’d pulled out his journal, and he now traces one of the intricate diagrams with his finger. His expression is grim. “I’m sorry, but we don't have the luxury of waiting. Evren’s Eye will reach perihelion in less than a fortnight.”

The others turn to Saihara in shock and Ouma grins to himself once their eyes are off him. The tactician never fails to disappoint. 

“Less than a fortnight to take the castle _and_ get past the capital’s borders?” Akamatsu asks, looking a fair bit more pallid than before.

Ouma affects a gasp. “Yikes, guess we _gotta_ get a move on or we’ll never get there in time to start the ritual and bring ol’ Evren back! Well, not for another… eighty-three years? Is that what what’s-her-face’s tome said?” He grins beatifically, swinging his feet back and forth in the air, “I’m sure we’ll all be around for that, though!” 

From the looks on their faces, the gravity of their situation has started to sink in.

“Then Hoshi’s plan’s probably for the best,” Amami mutters, mind no doubt already working a mile a minute. “We’d better get a move on. I’ll go wake everyone else up.” He takes his spyglass back from Saihara and heads back for the campsite. 

Hoshi also rises to his feet, grabbing the pile of arrow shafts he’d most likely spent the night-shift whittling away. “I’m gonna guess I’ll be taking the rear guard. The usual stealth group, yeah?”

Saihara’s still too busy scribbling in his journal to respond, so Akamatsu nods with a wan smile for him. Hoshi gives her a lazy salute, then heads off after Amami with Toujou in tow. 

With only the three of them left behind, Ouma hooks his legs around the branch and swings back, dangling upside-down a few inches above Saihara’s shoulder. He whistles appraisingly, causing the tactician to jolt, “Neat doodles! Did you remember to double-check your work? Triple-check? Cen _tuple_ -check? Like I always say, you’ve gotta be extra careful when the fates of elder gods are on the line.”

Saihara looks up at him, dark eyes weirdly appraising. “It sounds an awful lot like you’re beginning to believe in Evren’s validity.”

Ouma shrugs, tucking his arms behind his head. “Who said I don’t believe? I don’t think I’ve ever said that.”

Akamatsu sends him a withering glare. “You certainly imply it any chance you can get.”

“But implying still isn’t _saying,_ ” he replies, waggling his finger in her direction. “Semantics.”

Akamatsu puffs up and opens her mouth to respond, but Saihara cuts her off. “Whether Ouma-kun believes or not doesn’t negate the fact that he’s here and helping us now, isn’t that right?” He sends a small smile up at Ouma, one that comes across as far more significant than Ouma would prefer. 

Ouma bristles, but hides it behind a placid grin. Saihara might think he’s got him figured out, but no one _knows_ Ouma. He makes certain of it.

So he plays it off instead with a shrug. “Yep, if the big ol’ lizard really wants my love and affection, then she’s gotta hit me with something that’ll absolutely blow me away! I want some flair, some pizzaz! Something… _cataclysmic!_ ”

Akamatsu isn’t fazed. “What, her Brand and visions weren’t enough for you?”

Ouma waves a hand at her in a shooing gesture. “What can I say, I’m a hard sell, and a little psychic projection doesn’t cut it. Any old mage can do that… right?” He smirks. “Besides, if I’d really wanted a voice rattling through my head at all hours of the day, nagging me to do the right thing all the time, I would have been fine just staying by your side, Akamatsu-chan!”

She glances at him, unimpressed, but unlike some others in their group no doubt would in her place, she doesn’t rise to the bait. Instead she turns to Saihara, laying a gentle hand on his shoulder. “I'm going to go talk to Toujou and Angie. We’ll have to decide which healer goes with which group.”

Saihara pats her hand and thanks her, asking her to pass something on to Angie. When she walks off, Ouma yells after her turned back, “Hey, I’ve got staves too! Rude.”

He waits for her to go before he peers back down over Saihara’s shoulder. The open page is a chart of the stars, with constellations dotting the paper in dark ink. He recognizes Saihara’s crisp script scattered throughout the page, marking notes on the projected path of the upcoming comet. 

There are other notes, though, in a far messier scrawl that fill in some of the constellation names and orbital calculations where Saihara’s writing had trailed off. Even if he didn’t keep such a tight surveillance over the party’s incoming and outgoing mail, it wouldn’t be hard to narrow down whose handwriting this is.

Simple handwriting for a simple boy.

“I’m surprised that buffoon even knows simple addition,” Ouma mutters, hating that thin, traitorous thread of his voice that sounds mildly impressed.

“Momota-kun is extremely well read when it comes to astronomy, actually. In fact, there’s a lot of things you could learn from the others if you took the time to listen to them,” Saihara replies. He doesn’t turn his face up from the pages, but Ouma can hear the smile on his voice.

Ouma scoffs, feeling his face twist in distaste. “Ugh, no thanks. I’d catch their stupidity, and there’s no stave in existence that can cure that. Oh, speaking of…,” he reaches down a hand to point down at one of the messy trails of ink. “That should be 37 degrees, not 38. _Obviously_. Make sure to tell Boy Wonder that when you see him.”

Saihara looks over the equation for a moment, then carefully scratches out the number to correct the mistake. “Thank you, Ouma-kun,” he says, with that same kind (knowing?) lilt to his voice, much to Ouma’s chagrin. 

With that finished, Saihara tucks his charcoal pencil away and then closes the pages carefully so as not to smudge his work. “We should be leaving within the hour. Please don’t stay hanging like that for too long. You’ll give yourself a hemorrhage if you’re not careful.”

“Not if I keep on healing myself!” Ouma brings a hand up to tap at his chin thoughtfully. “At least, I think that’s how it works. Now I kind of want to find out!”

Saihara glances up at him, exasperated but with not even a shred of annoyance. Resilient, isn’t he? “Within the hour,” the tactician repeats, coupled with an all-too-knowing look, before he starts off towards the breakfast preparations. 

“Sir yes sir!” Ouma calls after him, but all Saihara offers in response is a gentle wave over his shoulder. 

When Saihara is good and out of view, Ouma curls back up to an upright position on the branch and lets the smile fall from his face. He pulls his own spyglass from the pouch at his back and turns it to the horizon. Amami was probably right in his time estimates, which means they’d have to hurry once on flat ground to make it to the castle by sundown. Either that or risk checking off another day from their steadily dwindling timeframe. While _he_ might be good at a little nighttime espionage, that same level of tact can’t be expected for… oh, it’d be a safe estimate to say a good fifty percent of the ragtag band of misfits he’d found himself lumped together with.

Two former knights, two failed assassins, an amnesiac manakete, the former hand to the Commandant himself, and a spacey cleric who thought herself the vessel of a dragon before Evren was even a popular name on anyone’s lips. And that’s just to name a handful of them. This isn’t the introduction to a an epic poem for the ages. It’s the start to a punchline, and boy does Ouma feel more like the butt of the accompanying joke with every passing day.

With a long sigh, he folds up the spyglass and swings back down to the ground to head back to camp.

Yes, he muses several hours later as he scales one of the castle’s large oriel windows and slips through, if their story is the epic Shirogane claims it is, then at least it's an interesting one. Whether it’s the actual Cosmos Dragon leading them on as everyone is so wont to believe or just the agenda of an enigma he still can’t quite grasp, he’d rather keep it interesting. 

At least then he can keep convincing himself that there’s some meaning behind all of this, one that was worth leaving all of DICE behind. He doesn’t want them caught up in the fallout that’s sure to come of this. He’s the one who was chosen for this so-called Brand, after all. It’s for their own good if they don’t bear that responsibility with him.

The sound of clashing metal echoing from somewhere outside draws his attention. Hefting his bow further up along his shoulder, Ouma follows the empty corridor and finds a door leading outside. Peeking around the wall finds him two guards. He watches as they trip up the stairs from the inner bailey, probably trying to get to the better vantage from the parapets. 

As they scramble to detangle themselves from their bows, Ouma sighs and touches his hand to the short stave strapped across his lower back. Before the enemy soldiers can even reach for their quivers, they’re falling to the ground, unconscious. The stave ceases glowing and Ouma lets out a breath as the sensation of its magic shivers back down his arm and out through his fingers. He gives his hand a quick shake to rid the last of the pins and needles, then crouches down and over to the sleeping soldiers, hugging the crumbling wall of the parapets as he goes. 

For an outpost so close to the capital, he really expected more from these lackeys. They’re still young, though, not too far in age from himself by the looks of it. Their weapons look like they were taken from the bargain bin too. The empire either doesn’t actually care to hold this point, or they’re far more shorthanded than they project to the public. The latter would certainly be a point in this “Crusade’s” favor, but the former… 

Ouma makes a mental note to write that down later when he’s got access to his journal, but for now he busies himself with cleanup. The bows are practically toys, but the arrows the two soldiers were carrying are of decent enough quality. He takes a few for himself, admiring the bright, colorful fletching for a moment, and snaps the rest across his knee. Then he turns the two guards back-to-back and starts to bind their hands and feet together. For efficiency’s sake, of course.

From a quick scan of the perimeter, the bailey seems mostly empty. A few bodies litter the ground by the entrance to the main gate. Unlike the two he’s taken care of, though, there’s not a drop of life left between them. Harukawa’s work, by the looks of the knife hilts decorating their backs, though their gout faces and leathery skin reek of Shinguuji’s Nosferatu magic. 

Ouma’s mouth thins to a grim line. He cinches the bindings with a tight, white-knuckled yank. 

A shout comes from behind him, somewhere over the crumbling stone wall. Satisfied with his work, he pushes himself up into a squat and tilts an eye over the edge. This side of the castle hugs the mountainside it was built into with only a narrow sliver of space between the climbing rocks and the moat. 

How Momota, of all people, managed to stumble into this area by himself is beyond Ouma, but there he is, charging the back entrance guards and yelling like a banshee all the while. The guards startle at his war cry. One of them ducks through the door, while the other hefts his lance up with terrified determination. 

Ouma slips the bow off of his shoulder and fits his hand loosely at the grip. He then leans his free elbow on the wall, tucking his chin into his hand. With how the groups usually get split up, he rarely gets the chance to observe Momota in battle. He’s had intel on the mercenary and his ragtag militia for years, and traveling together with him has certainly given Ouma quite a bit to work with as is, but he never passes up a chance to get more information.

Momota Kaito, as Ouma has come to understand him thus far, is impulsive, cocky, uncontrollable, and _loud_. Made for the front lines, that’s for sure. Quick to start fights, physical or otherwise, but terrible at finishing them. Naively trusting, and quick to jump to conclusions. Easily riled up as a result. A sentimental dunce at his most aggravating, but also the emotional core of whatever group he fits himself into. Devoted, whether it be to his cause or his companions. Simple, but so far in a non-threatening way.

Still, one never knows, Ouma muses as he watches Momota sweep his sword towards the enemy’s side in an exaggerated arc. Even though he’s almost certainly not the one pulling the strings of this crusade, he might still be complicit. Ouma might take pleasure out of needling him, but he knows to keep his distance where it counts.

Below Ouma’s vantage point, Momota manages to catch the guard’s lance and duck underneath it, but even then his sword doesn’t do much against the armor. This is, unsurprisingly, going nowhere for the mercenary. Ouma reaches back towards his stave again with a sigh. He’s high up, but the spell’s radius might still reach. 

He’s abruptly pulled from that thought, though, as a loud scrape of metal signals an axe lodging itself in the stone only a few inches away from Ouma’s right arm. He jolts back. Down in the lower bailey there’s a new soldier. A reinforcement from somewhere outside, maybe. He doesn’t appear to have another throwing axe, but he does have a large steel one strapped to his back, with one hand already reaching back to grab it. 

“ _Shit_ ,” Ouma hisses. There’s no guard wall to hide behind inside the bailey, which means he won’t have anywhere to safely cast. With his bow as his only option, Ouma quickly tips a hand into his quiver, feeling along the arrow shafts for familiar etchings in the wood. He doesn’t have much time, though; the guard is already racing towards the base of the stairs. 

Finally, his fingers catch on the right markings. He quickly nocks the arrow and aims it down for the base of the stairway. The guard hesitates at the sight of it, which means Ouma’s arrow hits squarely on the bottom step, just as he’d planned. A smoke cloud explodes outwards and engulfs the man instantaneously. His coughing rattles through the empty bailey, but the problem with open-air courtyards is that there’s no space to contain the blast. A small breeze is all it takes for the cloud to be brushed aside and for the guard to come back into view, hunched over at around the middle of the stairs. 

He looks up and catches Ouma’s eye. Ouma knows that look well. He sees that same wild impulsivity on that stupid merc and half the rest of this bumbling crusade’s faces daily. This guy is about to charge him. 

Unfamiliar, unpleasant panic begins to twist in Ouma’s gut as the soldier gets his feet back up from under him. Even if he tries to run, this will just turn into a pointless chase until the soldier can close the distance, and Ouma is _not_ made for fighting at close quarters. His best chance is to take the guard out here and now while he has the high ground. 

He sneers in the guard’s face as his hand dips back into the quiver, even as he feels nervous sweat prick at the back of his neck. The guard takes the bait and lunges up the final stairs. 

Ouma’s hand flies out of the quiver and back to the bow, just in time to nail the man straight in the chest plate with a heavy, steel-tipped blunt. The impact causes the guard to overbalance and his back foot catches the stair at an odd angle. He slips backwards, helmet and armor clattering against the stone steps as he tumbles back down them and to the floor. 

With that taken care of, Ouma spares a moment to breathe again. The man remains dazed and seemingly incapacitated at the foot of the stairs. Ouma’s heart hammers, but he keeps his bow hand trained, waiting for a sign that the man could still stand back up. 

Noise behind him startles him. He turns to look back out over the parapet wall. Down by the guard entrance, Momota is still engaged with the lancer, but at some point between when he’d had looked away and now, another soldier had crept out from over the hill. In the man’s hands is a large, two-handed sword. A brave sword, Ouma immediately recognizes. 

Momota, too engaged with the lancer, doesn’t appear to have the faintest idea that this soldier is winding up to strike only a few paces behind him. With his nerves already flared and no time to think, Ouma blindly reaches back into the quiver and nocks the first arrow he can find, letting it fly.

Just like always, it hits the soldier dead between the eyes.

 

Unlike always, though, it doesn’t fall away. 

 

The soldier stumbles a step, then another, before the sword falls from his hands. He makes one final lurch before his body crumples to a heap across the ground. The arrow protrudes at a sickening angle from his forehead like a beacon, the brilliant colors of its feathered fletchings matching those of the man’s now mud-stained tabard. 

 

Ouma’s breath hitches and his stomach drops. 

 

That hadn’t been one of his arrows.

 

He stays stays frozen that way—heart in his stomach—until, seconds or minutes or hours later, a voice snaps him back to the moment. 

 

Momota’s. 

 

He registers the mercenary’s words, but they sound far off and distant, as though lost in a haze. He’s yelling something. Something about being owed. Owe him? Well of course, Ouma _had_ just saved his life. There was no way the mercenary would have reacted in time, after all. By all means, Ouma should be taking advantage of this situation, lording it over Momota’s thick head. He should be laughing. He should be mocking the mercenary for being distracted, for letting his guard down, for being stupid and reckless as always.

 

He should be saying something. _Anything._

 

“No rubbing it in my face about how you got the guy first?” Momota continues to yell up at him, all hot, arrogant bravado to combat his obviously wounded pride. “Or how you stole my kill?”

 

A _kill_.

 

Ouma had killed that soldier.

 

And Momota was treating it was nothing, like it was a _competition_ to be _won?_

 

Ouma sees red, even as the world seems to tip out from under him. 

Of course Momota doesn’t understand the accusation hidden in his words. He doesn’t get it. _None_ of them get it. The rest of this damned Crusade might have been complicit in the Dragon’s con, but not Ouma. Never him. He may bear the same cursed Brand they all do, but he has never let it own him. He’s never let it _define_ him.

And that’s it, isn’t it? Evren defines the lot of them, gives every last one of them meaning and purpose. If it’s Evren’s divine mission, after all, what do the lives of a few pesky knights matter?What does the razing of a few towns and homesteads matter? It’s no wonder that they’ve all so easily rationalized the bloodshed, ignorantly swathed in the shroud of some ancient prophecy that they can always turn to to justify their actions. How _convenient_.

But it’s not like this is a new revelation. Ouma’s been knee deep in this mess for months now; a sheep in wolves’ clothing, hiding among the predators and biding his time until he could expose this farce for what it really is. Every enemy he’s watched his comrades cut down, every town they’ve left in shambles, he could soldier on and hold his tongue because at the very least least it wasn’t him joining in on the slaughter. At the very least he was working to find the root cause of it, or a true end to it. 

But now what grounds does he have to stand on now that he’s played a hand in the brutality as well? In the end, it seems he’s been unwittingly strung along like the rest of the puppets, dancing along to the Dragon’s mad tune just like his Branding foretold he would.

Ouma’s stomach lurches but still he manages to twist his face into the cruelest thing he can manage. “No,” he bites down at Momota, spilling all of his malice and self-loathing into the words, “I think you and this whole Crusade have far too great a lead on that for me to _ever_ catch up.”

 

Then, like a coward, he runs, from the scene and his own accusations both.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yo has anyone else ever noticed that the V3 logo looks a lot like a dragon head? Wild. 
> 
> Anyway, here’s a full list of everyone’s class types before we move on if people are curious: 
> 
> **Ouma:** Trickster (Bows/Staves) (listen I know I switched the weapons for Trickster and Adventurer but hear me out…. this is better)  
>  **Momota:** Hero (Swords/Axes)  
>  **Akamatsu:** Paladin (Swords/Lances)  
>  **Saihara:** Tactician (Swords/Tomes)  
>  **Maki:** Assassin (Swords/Knives)  
>  **Shirogane:** Dark Flier (Lances/Tomes)  
>  **Tenko:** Taguel (Beast Stones)  
>  **Himiko:** Mage (Tomes)  
>  **Angie:** Shrine Maiden (Staves)  
>  **Gonta:** Knight (Lances)  
>  **Kiibo:** Manakete (Dragon Stones)  
>  **Iruma:** Wyvern Rider (Axes)  
>  **Shinguuji:** Shaman (Dark Tomes)  
>  **Toujou:** Maid (Knives/Staves)  
>  **Hoshi:** Sniper (Bows)  
>  **Amami:** Adventurer (Swords/Bows)
> 
> Feel free to ask any questions about the AU in the comments or over at [my tumblr](http://devicing.tumblr.com)! Expect Part II to show up later in the week!


	2. part ii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (shh no one saw me accidentally post this before editing it)

 

 

Momota reels back with a curse as Ouma spills his guts out across the weeds.   
  
To be fair, it’s not like there’s much there to spill anyway. Even in the dark, he can tell that Ouma is mostly just dry heaving, the contents of his stomach most likely emptied out on the first go. In fact, just how much of his stew _had_ he eaten? It doesn’t seem like much at all, if any.

As a second wave of heaving wracks Ouma’s body, he crumples to his hands and knees, the bow falling to the ground with him. 

Momota is already halfway over to his side by the time he realizes what he’s doing. He quickly slows his advance as his thoughts catch up to him, only reeling back a pace again when Ouma lets out another round of wet coughing. Then he lingers, just a step or two away, watching with wide eyes as Ouma spits out the last of the bile trapped in his throat.

The fit subsides soon enough, but Momota can still see the way he’s trembling in the moonlight. His back hunches further and his breathing comes out in haggard puffs that grow more erratic by the second. His hands curl into tight fists around the weeds and loamy soil underneath them. Ouma’s stomach might be done, but there’s still _something_ wrong, with him by the looks of it.

Momota’s gut twists with a strange sort of emotion that he can’t really place. It’s not disgust, at least not entirely. It’s just… come to think of it, has Ouma ever looked so _small_ before, or is it just a trick of the light now as it plays across his huddled, shivering back? Either way it feels wrong to see him like this. 

There’s a strange disconnect between the Ouma that Momota _knows_ he knows and the one that he’s watching right now. This Ouma looks so unassuming, curled in on himself like he is, while usually Ouma is just so…

He tosses the thought away with a shake of his head. No, he can’t think like that, not when Ouma’s looking so sad and pitiful. He’s better than that. Even if it’s Ouma, the weird anxiety in his gut spurs him to move forward again.

Momota approaches carefully, watching the outlaw with cautious concern, like he would a wounded beast. Ouma shudders again as Momota kneels down beside him, but otherwise doesn’t move to acknowledge his presence. Momota tries to keep his tone light as he says, “You, uh, okay there?” He pauses to let out a stilted laugh, “I mean obviously not, but… looks like you got it all out of your system at least? I guess we can thank Evren that—“

“Don’t.”

The sharp cut of Ouma’s words and the icy-cold intensity of his voice shocks Momota to stillness, awkwardly leaving one hand limp in the air from where it had almost reached out for Ouma’s hunched shoulder. He hadn’t even noticed he’d been doing that.

Ouma speaks again, the angles of his body turning hard and sharp as he does. “Don’t touch me.”

There’s something in the specific tone of his voice that’s eerily familiar. Something barbed. Dangerous. In fact, it’s almost reminiscent of a tone Harumaki had used to speak to him, way back before she’d taken up with _Ad Astra_. It’s weird to be back on the business end of a threat that severe again.

The weirdest part of it, though, is that it’s not the kind of tone that he’s ever heard come out of Ouma’s mouth, not once in all the time they’ve spent traveling together. It’s not even one Momota ever would have imagined _could_ have come out of him, now that he really thinks about it. That’s what makes it all the more unsettling. 

Ouma’s back trembles violently again and he makes a lurching, gulping sound that has Momota wanting to both comfort and run, which is a strange thought because, again, this is _Ouma_ he’s talking about.

When the trickster manages to speak again, he sounds a little out of breath, but that cold bite is gone, replaced with his more recognizable, snide sarcasm.“Thanks, _hero,_ but I can take it from here.” 

Momota’s mouth turns downwards as he leans further into Ouma’s space. “Uh, have you seen yourself? Just let me give you a hand, alright?”

“I don’t need it,” comes the response from behind the curtain of his bangs. It wavers on the tail end of another full-body shiver.

“Seems to me like you do,” Momota replies.

As if in retaliation, Ouma plants one trembling arm to the ground and manages to push himself up with flagging energy. He steadies a hand on the broken sconce beside him as his body begins to tremble with the weight of keeping himself sitting upright. His bangs fall aside and his gaze lands on Momota with sharp, molten intent. “I don’t need it,” he rasps out, hushed but still vicious. His face breaks out into a cruel smirk, “Your help or your _p-pity._ ”

Momota feels his hackles rise. “It’s not _pity._ I’m just trying to help.”

“ _Help_?” Ouma’s laugh lashes out of him. Somehow it manages to sting even around his uneven breathing. “How n-noble of you! What chivalry! As to be expected of one of Evren’s Branded.”

Why is Ouma trying to pick a fight _now_ of all times? Is that condescending pride of his so fucking fragile? 

”I’m not just doing it because of Evren,” Momota tries to insist around clenched teeth.

“Oh?” Ouma says with false interest.

“I’m doing it ‘cause I’m a decent fucking person,” he finishes with a growl. 

Somehow Ouma still manages to look snide even as he struggles for breath.“S-Sure. Keep telling yourself that th-that’s why you’re still here. M-Maybe if you say it enough it’ll come true, just like all the fairy tales you idiots seem stuck on!”

Momota’s eyes narrow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”  
  
“It means,” Ouma pauses to take another choked breath, “that you’re a n-narcissist who thrives off of being relied on and will take every chance you can get t-to puff up that ego of yours.”

“ _I’m_ the narcissist?” Momota feels his shoulders hunch up and his stance go rigid. “Then what the fuck are _you_?”

Ouma sneers at him, all teeth as he says, “What can I say: takes one to know one! You can spend a-all day arguing the differences between a crow and a raven, but they’re b-both still the same _corvus_ in the end.”

“ _Fuck_ you, man,” Momota spits. “I’m nothing like you and you don’t know _shit_ about me or—”

“Look,” Ouma snaps, cutting Momota off mid-sentence. His voice drips with acid between gulping, shaky breaths. Any trace of a smile is gone from his face. “I’ll spell it out for you s-since you don’t seem to be catching up fast enough for my liking: I know you just love picking m-mongrels up off the streets—helps you feel _real_ good about yourself, right? Lets you p-play at being the big hero, right?”

His hand clenches around the sconce and he glares up at Momota with sharp, fever-bright eyes. “But I don’t really want to be your charity case right now, so be the good little Branded you are and g-go follow that… _fraud_ of a Dragon of yours off and _out of my sight_.”

Momota feels his already-thin patience snap. 

Before he knows what he’s doing, he takes one long step forward and swoops down to grab Ouma’s arm, which he uses to hurl the boy up. He has one lucky break where Ouma seems too shocked to react with anything more than a startled hitch of his breath. Momota uses that split second to haul him up to his face. Ouma’s eyes are wide—the closest thing Momota’s ever seen to him being caught off guard. 

It feels good, _really_ good, to get underneath that stupid mask of his. 

The moment ends abruptly, though, as Ouma starts to life and whips his free hand to Momota’s forearm. It scrambles for purchase at first, then latches on, digging in with hawk-like fierceness. “Let _go_ of me!” he hisses, yanking his captive arm back and digging his feet into the dirt. His eyes shine fiercely in the moonlight.

Momota retaliates by trying to shake him off, but the little bastard just digs his talons in further.Cursing, Momota yanks Ouma’s captive arm back, which manages to get him to lurch off balance. It’s a small victory, but a short-lived one. Ouma wrenches his nails across Momota’s exposed forearm, causing him to curse out in pain. This gives Ouma enough of an opening to duck behind Momota’s back and painfully twist his arm backwards. Momota swears. His first instinct is to grab at Ouma with his free hand, which he successfully wrenches deep into his long bangs. He pulls back until the boy hisses and has no choice but to follow along as Momota shoves him away and right into the nearest tree.

Ouma connects with dull thud and a wet gasp. As he slumps limply against the tree under Momota’s hand, it feels _good_. It feels _earned_. It feels like a _victory_. A wild grin splits its way across Momota’s face as he twists his fingers deeper into Ouma’s dark hair. 

He’s finally gotten a leg up on Ouma. Finally! Who’s laughing now? Who’s the one floundering now? This is what the gutter-rat _gets_ for being such an selfish, arrogant, ungrateful, two-faced—

Reality hits Momota like a slap to the face. He feels the tension in his body begin to seep out of him.

What the hell?

Ouma is unmoving under his hand.

What the _hell?_

(His left palm burns.)

As his brain catches up to what he’d done, Momota starts to notice things. Small things. Like the way Ouma’s forehead is feverish and damp against the heel of his palm. Like how every so often a tremor still runs through him. His breathing, too, still jumps out of him in uneven gasps, unrelated to their fight. His eyes don’t—or maybe _can’t_ —seem to catch on anything. They glare up at Momota from between his tangled bangs, but they seem lost and unfocused. The threat is there, raw and trying to be fierce, but the energy to back it up isn’t. 

Ouma’s scared. _Again_. Only this time it’s because of _him_.

Momota flinches away from Ouma which causes him to loosen the grip he still has clenched in the boy’s hair. A fraction of the tightness in Ouma’s expression suddenly slackens as a result. _Gods._

The shame falls like a stone into his stomach and he quickly but carefully untangles his fingers the rest of the way from Ouma’s bangs. With them gone, Ouma sways once before his legs give out from under him and he slides down the trunk of the tree, as though Momota’s hand had been the only thing keeping him upright. 

That feels… well, it feels _awful._

Momota reels. What had come over him? Was he… is he really _that_ petty? That caught up in this stupid scuffle? In his biases? Had he really dehumanized Ouma that much?

His eyes dip down to look at Ouma. He finds the trickster’s gaze, unsteady but still molten-bright, as it tips up at him between his matted, sweat-slicked hair.

Ouma might be a nightmare most hours of the day, might be a pain in the ass more often than not, but… but he’s _sick_. Or… something like it, at least. And even besides that, he’s still… he still bears the same Brand they do, doesn’t he? In the end, he’s still one of them _,_ right?

Momota swallows dryly around the bitter aftertaste of his shame and rubs a thumb over his aching palm.

There are no words between them. They simply stare at each other, appraising every minute detail. Momota’s shamed, confused gaze matched by Ouma’s own unsteady and dubiously wary one. The sole sound that fills the night air is the short, uneven rasp of Ouma’s breathing as it shudders out of him. 

Ah. Maybe Ouma’s reactions were never about being sick at all.

When the moment stretches too long, Ouma’s expression starts to harden over again, as though patching up all the cracks that had splintered out before. 

His brow creases and he opens his mouth to say something, but Momota beats him to the punch. “Head between your knees,” he blurts.

And Ouma… Ouma’s face does this funny little thing where it seems to both flinch and twist in on itself, like he’d blindly bitten into fruit and had been surprised to discover it wasn’t the lemon he’d expected. Momota doesn’t let himself stop there. He lowers his voice, eyes guiltily darting away from Ouma’s cautious, searching gaze. “Just… focus on breathing, okay? And…,” he reaches back, unfastening a water-skin from the back of his belt. He thrusts it in Ouma’s face. “Drink this. Sips, not gulps. You’ll just make yourself feel worse if you go and chug it down.”

Before Ouma can even try to respond, Momota drops the skin into his lap and jerks back. His hand flies up to his neck, kneading nervously into the line of the muscle there while his eyes dart up to the tree line. “I’m… look, I’ll get you something to eat ‘cause you’re really gonna need it after that, so…” 

He makes the mistake of dipping his eyes back down. The water-skin lies limply in Ouma’s hand. His ink-dark stare is hauntingly void of any reaction, save his ever-erratic breathing and sweat-slick forehead.

“Just. Stay here, alright?” Momota barks, turning quickly on his heel. “And don’t fucking move!”

He strides off with purpose, aiming for the warm glow of the torchlights that spills over the garden wall and desperately ignoring both the heavy weight of guilt in his chest and the strange twinge in his palm.

 

* * *

 

“Bread?” Toujou says, tone ever so polite but startled nonetheless. 

Momota nods stiffly.

If she notices his fidgeting, she doesn’t say anything about it. Instead, she straightens up from the cold-pantry where she’d been storing the leftovers from earlier and gently laces her fingers together at her waist. Looking mildly concerned, she asks, “I apologize. Did you not get a sufficient amount at dinner earlier?”

He shifts from one foot to the other, eyes dancing away from her own cool green ones. “No, I did, but it’s just… I, uh, got hungry again, what with the big battle and all, y’know? A-And there could be reinforcements coming to take back the castle any minute now, so I’ve gotta stay on my game by being in peak condition!”

Toujou looks at one of the freshly baked bread loaves in question, still cooling on the table. “Are you sure you wouldn’t want more stew? I believe protein might be more helpful.”

Momota thinks about the chunks of half-digested beef and carrots waiting back in the garden for him. His nose wrinkles, “Ah, grains are also important for a balanced meal, right?”

Toujou’s head cocks to the side. “I suppose. However, do you really need the entire loaf for just yourself?”

“I-I’m a growing boy!” he quickly interjects, gesturing a hand down the line of his body.

Her eyes track his hand appraisingly, then come back up to his face. “You are neither a boy nor are you still growing, as far as I can tell.”

“Maybe not in terms of height, but these bad-boys still have room for improvement!” He pulls both of his arms up beside his head and flexes them. The effect is slightly dampened by the thick leather armor encasing them. He barrels on before Toujou’s skepticism can make him stumble, “A-And besides, it’s not like it’s all for me!”

She blinks at him with cool curiosity. “It’s not?”

_Shit_. “I-I mean,” he continues, hoping he’s not digging himself deeper. “You know how I sometimes fit in training with Maki and Shuuichi after dark?” She nods. “Well, last time Shuuichi pushed himself too far and got so burnt out that he would’ve keeled over if we hadn’t been there to catch him! The poor guy doesn’t know how to pace himself, I tell ya!” 

“Well,” comes a voice from behind Momota, “if _I_ recall correctly it was _your_ grueling workout regimen that left me so fatigued.”

_Double shit_. Momota turns to find Saihara lingering in the doorway to the mess hall. He has a tin mug in one hand and several leather-bound books tucked to his chest with the other. He regards Momota curiously as he makes his way over to the kettle resting above the fireplace. 

“Sh-Shuuichi!” Momota says, faltering slightly. Pulling the wool over Toujou’s eyes was hard enough. Shuuichi’s another beast entirely.

“Wouldn’t that mean _you’re_ the one who’s bad at pacing?” Saihara continues, carefully lifting the kettle off of its hook. When he finishes pouring his tea and turns to Momota, there’s an amused glint in his eye. 

Momota forces out a laugh, but it sounds strangled even to his own ears. “Aha, guess you got me there! I’ll pay more attention next time, promise.”

Saihara sets his books down on the closest table, then wraps his fingers around his steaming mug. “Why are we gossiping about my pitiful physical fitness, anyway? Here I thought I was getting better.”

“Momota-san was just inquiring if he could procure some of the leftovers from dinner,” Toujou supplies before Momota can cut in. “He says you will be training together tonight and he wants to make sure you don’t overexert yourself.”

Saihara hides an amused smile in the steam from his mug as he moves to take a sip. “Did he? I’m sorry, I don’t remember making those plans.”

Momota swallows. “Ah, well I meant to tell you earlier, but I forgot? I figure we’ve gotta stay in tip-top shape if we’re planning to hit the capital by the end of the week, right? No room for slacking!”

Saihara lowers the mug. “That’s very forward-thinking of you, Momota-kun. I suppose I could save those books for the morning. If you’ll just let me finish my tea, we can get started right aw—“

“No!” Momota barks, startling Toujou and making Saihara pause. “I mean,” he stumbles, hands gesturing uselessly in the air. “We don’t _have_ to train tonight. I don’t want to keep you from any important strategizing.”  
  
“Oh no, those are just for pleasure,” Saihara says, glancing over to the stack of books he’d left on the table. “I found them when I went rooting around in the library earlier. I figured that since I finished drafting up a plan for our siege on the Wall before dinner I could—“

“A new plan, huh?” Momota interjects. He clears his throat nervously against the jump in his voice. “Well h-hey, have you gone over it with anyone else yet?”

Saihara eyes him curiously. “No, not yet.”

Momota claps a hand across the back of his neck. “Great! Then it’s settled! You let me take a peek at those plans of yours and I’ll see if I can spice ‘em up a bit!” He uses the hand to steer Saihara off towards the exit, grabbing up one of the loaves of bread as he passes. 

“I… suppose,” Saihara says, carefully trying to maneuver his tea as Momota’s hand hurries him along.

Toujou takes an aborted step towards them as they make for the exit. “Ah, do you still need the bread if you’re not going to be training tonight?”

“Brain food! We’ll just be exercising our minds instead of our bodies!” Momota calls back. The rest of his words spill out of him in a nervous rush, “By the way this bread smells _fantastic—_ your best work yet!—and sorry we’ve gotta run, but you know how it goes, so just keep up the good work and thanks again g’night!” 

He awkwardly salutes her with the loaf as he ducks beyond the kitchen doorway. She responds with an exasperated sigh and a half wave of her own before turning back to the pantry. 

Saihara surreptitiously scoops up the pile of books as they track past the table and off through the mess hall’s doors. “Isn’t that supposed to be for breakfast tomorrow?” he asks with a nod towards the bread in Momota’s hand.

Momota avoids his searching gaze. “Ah, well… there were four other loaves there. That’s plenty for the morning. Besides, we all know Iruma will be too cranky to touch anything that’s not meat before sunrise and Yumeno hates sourdough.”

Saihara hums, seemingly in agreement. 

They fall into a momentary silence as Momota guides them through the empty halls. From the courtyard, Angie’s laughter echoes along with the telltale crackling pops and fizzes of fire magic. Yumeno is no doubt putting on a bit of a show. Judging by the polite round of applause that filters in, a few of the others are gathered to watch (with the more emphatic clapping and whooping being Chabashira, no doubt). 

He’d normally be down there too, if this were any other day. Nighttime gatherings around the fire pit have become an easy routine for them all, a good way to destress after the toll of a day spent on the battlefield. It’s what he looks forward to the most at the end of a long day: trading battle stories over the fire, stargazing with Shuuichi, nudging Harumaki into group interaction, bickering with Ouma…

Huh. When had that become something he looked forward to? 

He’s brought out of that thought as Saihara says, “I appreciate a good night-time stroll as much as anyone, Momota-kun, but this is a bit of a roundabout way to get to the war room.” 

Momota jerks back to the present and looks around. Seems he’d unthinkingly been leading Saihara back to the east wing, by the looks of it. Not too far ahead of them is the window that he’s scaled through twice now. 

Shit. He can’t let Shuuichi know what he’s up to. “Um,” he stalls. “Guess I just don’t know the castle as well as I thought.”  
  
Saihara lets out a light chuckle. “We’ve only been here for a few hours. I wouldn’t expect you to.”

“Easy for you to say,” Momota grumbles. “You’ve probably already memorized the entire layout , what with how damn observant you are.”

Saihara doesn’t say anything to that, just ducks out from under Momota’s arm so he can face him head on. “Should we head back? I can lead the way this time,” he says as he watches Momota with raised brows.

Momota grimaces. He _could_ go back, but that would mean having to find a chance to double back again later, and that would be a major hassle. Besides, how long is he willing to leave Ouma waiting? If the guy is even still waiting for him back in the garden at all. His eyes dart over Saihara’s shoulder to the open window. “I guess…”

“Are you alright?” 

“Yeah,” Momota hurriedly replies. He looks back down at Saihara, who’s now watching him with obvious curiosity. “Yeah just… hey, what if we looked over the plans in the morning instead?”

Saihara blinks up at him, then gently leans a shoulder against one of the walls to take a sip from his still-steaming mug. “You’re being awfully fickle tonight.”

Momota lifts a hand to scratch at the back of his head. “I guess. Just a little frazzled after today's battle.”

“Is this about Ouma-kun, still?”

“What?” Momota blurts, too quickly and too loud to be anything close to subtle. He clears his throat. “N-No, it’s not about him!”  
  
“It’s just,” Saihara continues. “I heard from Kiibo-kun that you went looking for him.”

“Well I… I guess I _did_ , but…” Momota says, trailing off as he flounders for an excuse.

Saihara hums and takes another sip of tea. “If you’re still searching for him—“

“Which I’m not!”

“—you should know that I haven’t seen him since dinner,” Saihara finishes. “Which Kiibo-kun _also_ told me he he told _you_ Ouma-kun didn’t eat much of.”

At that, Saihara’s eyes dip down through the steam to eye the loaf of bread clutched in Momota’s other hand. Caught in the act, Momota uselessly tries to hide the offending evidence behind his back. He also tries to avoid the knowing glint of Saihara’s eyes when they attempt to catch onto his own. “Fine, okay, I looked for the little gutter-rat after dinner, but you know how slippery he is! I came up with jack.”

“And the bread?” Saihara asks.

“For training!” Momota insists. 

“The same training you called off?” 

“For the strategy meeting!”  
  
“Which you also, just now, called off?”

Momota inhales sharply and feels his shoulders petulantly hike up to his ears. “Well—!” he barks out with obvious strain in his voice. “I-It’s getting late and you have those books you want to read, and I just don’t want to keep you from doing something you actually enjoy if we have some down time, y’know? So—“  
  
“Momota-kun.” Saihara raises a placating hand to cut his rambling off. His smile is soft enough to mollify Momota to silence. “First of all, I always enjoy our training sessions and will gladly take a break from reading to join in on them, even if they leave me bone-tired and unable to move a muscle in the morning. Second of all…”

At this he pauses. He shuffles his books further up into his armpit so he can use his free hand to reach into his robes. From one of the inner pockets he produces a small vial, which he then holds out towards Momota. “If you _just_ so happen to stumble upon Ouma-kun while you’re _certainly_ not looking for him, would you please pass this on for me?”

Momota takes it and holds it up to the light. It’s not the usual vulneraries they carry, but it’s obviously some other kind of draught. “What is it?”

Saihara pats him gently on the arm as he passes. “Something he didn’t ask for but something he should probably take regardless. Don’t stay out too late. I expect you up bright and early to check over my strategy.”

With that, Saihara starts to walk off back the way they came. “Goodnight, Momota-kun, and thank you,” he calls over his shoulder.

“Yeah…” Momota says, deflating. “G’night.”

The footsteps fade out until it’s just Momota and the empty hall again. In one hand he holds the loaf of bread, in the other the vial. He feels a little out of the loop—also kind of guilty for dragging Shuuichi around for nothing—but he can’t keep wasting time. He’s got a situation to fix. 

Setting his shoulders, he shoves the vial into one of his pockets and hurries over to the open window.

 

* * *

 

To his utter surprise, when he stumbles back into the clearing in the garden, Momota finds Ouma exactly where he’d left him at the bottom of the thick oak tree. It’s a miracle that the guy hadn’t run off again, and somehow the fact that he _hadn’t_ concerns Momota more than if he _had_.

He comes to a stop in front of Ouma’s huddled form. After a moment of nervous fidgeting, he clenches his jaw and says “Here,” awkwardly offering up the loaf of bread with a stiff-fingered grip.

Ouma is still and quiet under Momota’s scrutinizing gaze. 

Momota frowns, shifting from one foot to the other. “Hey,” he thwacks the loaf of bread lightly across Ouma’s ducked head. It lands with a soft thud. “You’ve… look, bread’s simple enough that your stomach won’t reject it, alright? So take it. You’re only gonna feel worse in the end if you don’t.”

Ouma remains eerily silent and unmoving. The darkness engulfing them only makes the scene all the more unsettling, like the night is a physical presence watching over them both. Momota practically has to physically shake off the crawling sensation creeping under his skin. Gods, he wants to get back to the castle.

Maybe Ouma is still… scared. It still feels weird to think of him as anything like that, but here, huddling in on himself the way he is, he almost looks vulnerable, which is a thought Momota never thought he would have regarding the outlaw. Of all the things Ouma has ever projected himself to be, _vulnerable_ has never been anywhere close to one of them. 

Still, there has to be something more to this than just their fight, right? As weird as that had been, Ouma isn’t the kind of guy to sulk and shrink away after a scuffle. Besides, he was acting panicked even before Momota lashed out, so what the hell could have gotten him into this weird mood of his besides that?  


Momota lowers himself down into a squat, awkwardly working around the plates of his grieves and his thick leather armor, to try to get a better look at Ouma’s face. Unfortunately, the little hellion’s got it firmly pressed into the tops of his knees and hidden behind the inky curtain of his bangs. 

Momota huffs and shuffles on his haunches, peering this way and that to try to find an opening. “Seriously, Ouma,” he says, tone almost pleading. “Look I’m… I’m _sorry_ about earlier, alright? I shouldn’t have lashed out like that, a-and I don’t know if I freaked you out or what, but if you’re… I mean… look, you’ve gotta—“

Suddenly, Momota feels something trail down the line of his spine. Something cold and heavy and coming from _right behind him_.

He yelps, spine jerking concave and sending him off balance. His body lurches too far sideways as he tries to get a hand on his sword and he lands in a graceless sprawl across the ground. Still, he’s quick to scramble back, to get a hand on the grip, to get _away_ from whatever the _fuck_ was grabbing right for his—

…there’s nothing there. The darkness hangs heavy in the air, but the opening in the garden is completely empty. Momota’s heart hammers in his throat as his eyes scan the space wildly. 

Still, there’s _nothing_ as far as his eyes can see, but there had to have been _something_ out there, because he felt it righ—

A glimmer of light catches his attention from somewhere within the huddled mass of Ouma’s body. When he glances over at the source of it, he can just barely see the reflective face of a crystal entwined in smooth, curling wooden fingers. Almost like the end of a stave. 

Just then he notices that Ouma’s head has finally turned to face him, one eye peering out from behind the cut of his bangs. The crystal’s dull glow flashes brightly against the sly curve of his grin. 

“Oops,” Ouma says, a mischievous lilt to his voice. 

Momota stares at him for a moment, gaping, as his heart begins to slow down to its normal cadence. When he finds his voice again, the first thing that he manages to rasp out is a rough and breathless, “What the fuck is _wrong_ with you?” 

He feels his cheeks begin to burn as he scrambles back up onto his knees. “I was—,” he says, but quickly aborts that thought. He tries for another. “—I can’t believe you’d—” Abandons that one. “And I was _just—“_ Cuts that one off before it can get too far.

When all his options fail, Momota gives in to his basest instinct, letting all of his pent up frustration out on a long, guttural groan. One hand belatedly comes up to press against his face and muffle the sound. 

“Guess I wasn’t paying attention to my magical output and whatnot,” Ouma says brightly as he straightens back up. His hands pull the stave up out of his lap and then set it flat atop his knees. His fingers dance along the smooth, dark wood of it. “Don’t worry, I promise won’t tell anyone about that impressive falsetto of yours.”

Momota lets his hand limply drag down his face. Over the tips of his fingers, he regards Ouma with curious suspicion. All things considered, he sounds… better. Less breathless. Less feverish and panicked. The simultaneously playful and infuriating lilt is back in its rightful place at the ends of his sentences. His childish grin seems less forced at the seams. 

Had he taken Momota’s advice? Had he… listened to him?

When Momota goes too long without saying anything, Ouma’s smile starts to thin away, replaced by a familiar expression of careful, bored apathy. “Nothing, huh?”

Momota blinks out of his reverie. “What?”  
  
“Listen,” Ouma sighs. “I said I won’t tell anyone about that horrible banshee shriek of yours…”

Momota’s expression immediately sours, “ _Banshee shr_ —?“

Then the outlaw’s expression immediately darkens and his voice drops. “…for a price.” 

Momota feels himself start to stiffen—a sort of pavlovian response to that haunting darkness in Ouma’s eye at this point—but he forces himself to pause. To think about it. Ouma’s change in demeanor was too quick, too convenient, too _planned_. He’s not sure entirely sure why, but he’s suddenly almost _sure_ that it’s a bluff, just as he’s sure it’s being used to try to scare him off. 

Hedging his bets, Momota steels himself and forces his nerves to not back down.

When Ouma doesn’t get the desired response out of him, his face twists petulantly before smoothing out on a disappointed sigh. “No fun,” he grumbles as he sits back.

Despite everything, Momota feels the corner of his mouth twitch upwards. 

With nothing really to say, though, he decides to take the time to get a good look at Ouma and make a proper assessment. 

For starters, he’s not trembling so much anymore—which is great—but he’s still weirdly stiff. His hands are shaky around the wooden staff, but his grip isn’t as white-knuckled as before. There’s more color in his cheeks too, and less sweat dotted across his forehead.

Ouma seems to prickle under his analytical gaze. Momota watches as his lips purse into a thin line, followed by a minute twitch of his nose. “Shouldn’t you be skipping back off to the castle?” he asks.

Momota frowns and shakes his head. “No way. I brought you this bread and I’m not leaving until I see you eat it.”

“Don’t need it,” Ouma says with a flippant wave of his hand. 

“Bullshit.” Momota nods his chin at Ouma’s hands. They’re still trembling atop his knees. “You need to get something in you and this’s the best you’re gonna get.”

“But mooooom,” Ouma whines, sprawling back against the tree as his eyes roll up to the sky. “I don’t _want_ bread!” 

Momota feels his lip twitch. “Then what the hell _do_ you want?”

Ouma hums long and thoughtful. “I could really go for some cake. Chiffon cake, or maybe a nice _Genoise_ …”

Momota scoffs. “You could barely hold down stew. Besides, where would I even _get_ cake?”

“Well that’s for you to figure out, isn’t it?

“I’m not bringing you a damn cake, Ouma.”

“As a wise woman once said, _Qu’ils mangent de la brioche!_ ”  
  
“The _hell_ is that even supposed to mean?”

“It means you’re being _very_ unreasonable, Momota-chan.”

He squawks at the nickname. “ _Momota-ch—!_ ”

Momota cuts himself off with an abrupt snap of his jaw. There it was. _Again_. Ouma was getting smart with Momota, giving him lip just to get a rise out of him, wasn’t he? In no time at all he’d somehow managed to rile Momota up into another one of their stupid arguments, and for what? 

Well, now that he thinks about it, it’s kind of obvious. He’s trying to push Momota away—trying to put of distance between them, and not just the physical kind. 

Now that Momota’s aware of it, it seems almost comically obvious. Had the petty little fights they’d gotten into all been like this? Just how many other times had he fallen hook, line, and sinker for Ouma’s baiting? Was he _that_ gullible?

Actually, he doesn’t want to know the answer to that.

Momota sucks in a deep breath and forces the frustration out of himself on one long exhale. He feels his shoulders ease back down from where they’d been hiked up to his ears. He feels the tension in his brow leave him. He still scowls at Ouma, but not so heated, nor so deep-set. 

“I’m not leaving here until you eat the damn bread,” he grumbles, lowering himself down into a crosslegged position on the grass. 

Ouma’s head tips to the side. “Oho, a battle of patience, huh? You can’t possibly think this is a good bet for you.”

This time Momota vows to himself that he won’t rise to the bait. Instead he crosses his arms, hunkers down, and glares. 

For his part, Ouma doesn’t seem too ruffled at first. He watches Momota with confident skepticism, waiting for his patience to break. Momota fights every instinct to speak up or move or anything else that would give away his advantage. He can beat Ouma at his own game. He _can._ He just has to focus. 

After a few minutes, Ouma’s confidence seems to slip. His eyes narrow and his mouth tilts into lopsided frown, bottom lip jutting out just a little. It’s almost like he’s uncomfortable being watched so intently for so long. It’s kind of ironic, in a way.

Several long minutes after that, something unbelievable happens.

Ouma caves.

He doesn’t look at Momota when he does. He simply sighs, unfolds one arm, and reaches a hand out into the space between them. When nothing happens, he shoots Momota a sour look and crooks his fingers impatiently. His eyes go from Momota’s face down to his hand, then back up to his face, this time with one eyebrow cocked.

Befuddled and too focused on his self-imposed stalemate, it takes Momota an embarrassingly long couple of seconds to realize what it is that Ouma’s asking for. With a start, he remembers the loaf of bread in his lap. His stalwart demeanor instantly falls away as he fumbles to grab the bread and thrusts it out towards Ouma. 

Ouma eyes him cautiously, but snatches it from him nonetheless in the blink of an eye. Damn, Momota sometimes forgets how fast he is. It’s kind of impressive.

Ouma gives the bread a once over, then starts to aimlessly pick at the thick crust. “Gross, you got mud on it.”

“Shit, really?” Momota asks. He starts to lean in. 

His momentum is stopped by the flat butt of Ouma’s stave as it shoots up to press against his forehead. Ouma regards him cooly, stave in one hand, a small chunk of bread in the other. “Oh well. Mama always used to say that a little dirt helps you grow up big and strong!”

With that he pops the morsel of bread into his mouth and, miraculously, swallows it down.

Momota can’t stop the grin that splits across his face. “See,” he says, “that wasn’t so hard.”

Ouma refuses to look at him, but Momota can still catch a glimpse of the way he rolls his eyes and huffs to himself as he shoves another piece of bread into his mouth. 

Silence falls over them again as Ouma carefully makes progress with the bread loaf. Momota tucks his chin into his palm, resting the elbow on his knee, and he just… watches. And thinks.

Ouma is a tough nut to crack, and that’s what makes him so frustrating. From what Momota can tell, it’s like he’s a big grab-bag of personas all rolled up into one, all for the sake of making himself as inscrutable as possible. It’s an odd trade to deal in—deception and duplicity—but he and all the other members of DICE somehow manage to make a business out of it. A profitable one too, for that matter. To what end is anyone’s guess. Momota’s heard story after story over tavern bar tops and through village squares, yet no matter how many he’s heard and no matter how long he’s traveled with the enigmatic leader of DICE, he still hasn’t managed to dig further than the surface layer of those intentions. 

All those damn personas, each one hand crafted to fit a purpose, and Ouma is just so insufferably good at shuffling through their masks in order to steer things to his preferred outcomes. 

But that’s all those personas have ever been, right? Masks. Copies of characters real enough to be believable and recognizably fake enough to never give any of his real motives or intentions away. How anyone can live like that, hiding their true self behind mask after mask after mask, is beyond him. It has to be taxing, hiding yourself all the time, right?

Tonight, though… Momota doesn’t know how, but he can tell that the scared, haunted Ouma that had shown his face during their fight earlier had been something close to real. The Ouma he’d seen at that time had somehow slipped through the cracks. The Ouma now eyeing him warily out of the corner of his eye as he carefully chews his bread might just be the same. 

As if reading his mind, Ouma chooses that moment to cut his gaze back at him full, all suspiciously narrowed eyes and ballooning cheeks. A few crumbs cling to the corner of his mouth. 

He looks ridiculous. Momota can’t help the laugh that snorts out of him. 

Ouma regards him flatly as he swallows down his comically large bite of bread and then swipes the crumbs away with the back of his sleeve. “Hilarious. Here,” is all the warning he gives Momota before he chucks the rest of the bread his way. 

Momota catches it without much effort, but frowns. “That’s it?”

“Sorry if my delicate physique can’t stomach three rations worth of bread like yours can.”

Momota looks back at what was left of the loaf. Maybe bringing him the whole thing had been overkill. To be fair, Ouma _had_ picked his way through about a third of it. At this size it is now, it’s easy enough for Momota to slip what’s left into the bag at his waist.

“Well, I ate my fill, just like the doctor ordered,” Ouma continues. Momota looks back up to find him watching him with one eyebrow cocked. “Happy now?”

Momota ties the bag closed then lowers his chin to his arms, now crossed over his bent knees. No use in lying to him. “Yeah, actually,” he says, flashing the trickster a lazy grin. “You looked like shit earlier.”

Ouma’s mouth twists into a weird little frown, almost like a pout. Not the kind of response he’d expected to get out of Momota by the looks of it. That only makes Momota’s grin widen and Ouma’s pout become more pronounced. 

He rebounds quickly enough. “Then that means you can quit playing babysitter, doesn't it?” he says as his mouth pulls into a tight-lipped smile and his eyes crinkle at the corners. “You’re officially relieved of your duties, Momota-chan! Enjoy the rest of your night!”

This time it’s Momota who balks, the nickname catching him off guard. He shakes off his surprise though. If this is going to be another test to see who breaks first, two can play at that game. “Nah, now I get to move on to phase two.”

“Wow, you’ve really been hanging around Saihara-chan a lot, haven’t you? _‘Phase two_ ’?” he asks, lifting two hands into air quotes and dropping his voice in a mocking mimicry of Momota’s. “What does that entail?”

“Phase two is me getting you back in that castle before you keel over by yourself out here,” Momota says, shoving a thumb over his shoulder towards the firelight.

Ouma’s saccharine-sweet smile doesn’t falter. “Oh? You gonna sweep me off my feet, big guy? Something tells me that’ll cause a stir, especially with Little Miss Bloodshed…”

Momota continues talking before he can contemplate that jab too long. “How do you plan to get out of here then? The front gate’s still bolted up.”

“The same way I came, of course,” Ouma replies with a shrug. 

“The wall’s practically twice your size.”

“And the castle walls are almost four! Didn’t see you doubting my cat-like expertise earlier when Akamatsu-chan gave me the honors of scouting the place out.”

Well he’s certainly got the frustrating independence and unpredictability of a cat down. Momota snorts to himself at the image. “Sure, but that was before you puked your guts out in front of me. You could barely stand up on your own thirty minutes ago. ”

“Such a skeptic! Wouldn’t you believe I’m just chock full of surprises.” 

He doesn’t exactly deny it, though. There’s still a slight tremble in his hands and while he might not be feverish anymore, he definitely looks worn down to the bone. He needs help, even if he won’t admit it. 

A thought occurs to Momota. 

“Oh yeah, hang on,” he says as he shifts to get a hand into his pocket. He pulls out the vial Shuuichi had given him and holds it up. The liquid inside is a mesmerizing shade of lavender in the moonlight. Momota catches Ouma’s reflection in fractals through the glass. “Shuuichi said I should give this to you.”

He lowers the vial and Ouma comes back into focus. His eyes are sparkling. “A present from Saihara-chan, just for me?” He leans forward eagerly. “What is it? An elixir for super strength? Invisibility?”He lifts a hand to his mouth with a gasp. “A love potion?”

Momota pulls a face and frowns at the bottle. “Doubt that. He didn’t tell me what it does, but said you should take it.” 

Ouma’s smile loses some of its overstated brightness, falling into something half parts wistful and wry. The hand at his mouth falls away. “Can’t get anything past our dear tactician, can I?”

“You know what it is?”

Ouma shrugs with practiced nonchalance, “Saihara-chan doubts I’m getting my beauty sleep. Can’t imagine why. _I’m_ not the one with thirty-pound bags under my eyes.” He prods a finger at the porcelain-white skin under his eyes. If he’s trying to make a point, it’s hard to tell in the feeble moonlight.

Momota gives the bottle a light shake. “So this—“

“—is a sleeping draught, most likely. Actually, that must’ve been why he wanted to talk to Angie this morning…” he says, trailing off thoughtfully. His eyes dip down as he thinks.

“Huh,” Momota says. “Angie can make these kinds of things?”

“She worked under an apothecary when she first came mainland,” Ouma mutters, lost in thought. “Had to make money for her travels somehow.”

“First I’ve heard of it.”

Ouma’s expression darkens. “Obviously. She doesn’t like admitting when medicine and logic do better work than prayers to Dragons. She doesn’t like it when she has doubts.”

Momota blinks. “She told you that?”

Ouma rolls his eyes. “She didn’t have to.”

DICE business, Momota thinks as his nose wrinkles. Or maybe it was simply Ouma’s odd perceptiveness at work. Still, he thinks back to their bubbly healer, puzzling over what Ouma said. “What kind of doubts could _Angie_ possibly have?” he asks, half-joking.

“Everyone’s got their doubts.” Ouma says in a hushed tone. “Making people proud, achieving fame, winning wars, beating out fate…” His gaze hardens as his hands clench into fists. “Doubts are easy to have, and easy to prey on.”

There’s something chilling to Ouma’s words, something that causes Momota to pause. Just how much did he truly know about them all? How much info had he gathered on each and every one of them, and why? 

Did Ouma really distrust them that much, even now? 

After weeks spent traveling together, Momota would’ve thought all of those silly suspicions of his would have left him, but here he is, laying them out plain and simple for Momota to take in. Sure, suspicion when meeting strangers is a given—Momota knows; he’d distrusted Akamatsu and Shuuichi when they’d found him, and even the Brand had been suspicious at first!—but any misgivings he’d had had faded away just fine as he’d gotten to know them all better.

Well, most of them had. All except for his suspicions towards Ouma. 

Now that he thinks about it, for all that he’d been mad at Ouma for being so stubborn and suspicious of all of them, hadn’t Momota just been doing the same right back at him? What did he even really _know_ about Ouma? Not a damn thing, not really. He could say that was all Ouma’s own doing, but some of that blame probably lay with him as well. 

But here Ouma is now, telling him about Angie’s past, and Saihara’s worries. Here he is looking small and unsure and waxing poetic about doubt. Here he is, letting Momota get tiny glimpses beyond his mask, intentionally or not.

That begs a question, though.

“Why are you telling me this?” Momota asks, suddenly curious.

Ouma’s reaction isn’t a dramatic one, exactly, but he does seem to give pause. His eyes come back up from the ground to stare out at ahead of him. His brow furrows. He opens his mouth to say something, then slowly closes it. His tongue darts out to lick his lips before they purse together, puzzled. Maybe, Momota thinks, just maybe, he’ll continue this oddly honest streak of his.

A second passes, but then Ouma seems to cast whatever thought he’d had away with a simple shrug. He turns back to Momota with a wide but ultimately empty grin. “Who knows. Maybe Saihara-chan’s right and I’m just tired.” 

It’s a lie. 

Knowing that doesn’t exactly make Momota mad like it usually would, but it does feel something like a step backwards. It still stings, in a way.

Before Momota can press him any further, Ouma says, “On that note, it’s very rude to hog all of Saihara-chan’s affections, so I’ll be taking my present now.” He extends a hand towards Momota and the vial.

Momota glances at the draught and then back at Ouma. Using his free hand, he pushes himself up to standing. “If you want it,” Momota says once he’s reached his full height. He lifts the vial up and lets it dangle from his fingers above Ouma’s head. “Show me you’re really okay and come and get it for yourself.”

Ouma’s brow dips downwards, a crack in his otherwise perfectly pristine smile. “Bribing me? Really?” he asks flatly. “Who knew you’d stoop so low.”

Momota grins back at him. “Hey, I can be crafty if I need to. I’m ruthless in a game of poker—ask any tavern keep south of the Dragon’s Maw.” His head tips to the side and he sharpens his smile. “Or, what, did none of your lackeys think to tell you that?”

Ouma’s lips twitch up at the corners, for real this time, though he tries to tamp it down. Momota counts it as a victory. 

“Fine, you caught me,” Ouma sighs. He carelessly drops his stave to his side. Using his arms to propel himself forward, he rocks back and forth once, twice. On the third motion he lets his momentum carry him forward and up onto his feet. Before, his arms had swept out with dancer-like poise to keep himself balanced at full standing. Now, before Momota can even react, one of them swoops up to grab his wrist before he can pull it back and away. 

With Momota caught in his grip, Ouma ducks up and directly into Momota’s space, as if to whisper a secret to him. Momota’s eyes jump down to his mouth as he speaks. “I don’t half-ass my intel, Momota-chan. I know _exactly_ how poor your poker game is,” he practically purrs. “Leave the lying to me.” 

With that, Ouma plucks the vial out of Momota’s limp fingers with one hand, pats his cheek twice with the other, and slips away.

Momota stares after him for a second as the trickster pockets the vial and walks off. He tries to swallow, but it gets caught at a weird and sudden lump in his throat. “I-I said I was ruthless, not good,” he calls out to Ouma’s back as he stoops down to grab his stave from the ground. 

“I’ll judge that for myself, thank you very much,” Ouma replies as he straightens up on still-shaky legs.

That sounds kind of like a promise. Momota can’t fight down the grin that blooms across his face. “Oh, hell yeah, you’re on! I’ll wipe the floor with you!”

Ouma waves a flippant hand in the air, “Keep telling yourself that, Momota-chan.” Then he starts off ahead of Momota towards the garden wall. After a few steps he calls out. “Oh, and be a dear and grab my things for me.”

Momota stops in his tracks. “Wait, what?”

“Call it penance for being such a brute earlier! I’m a delicate snowflake, so I have to nurse this poor, sad body of mine.” He turns back just enough for Momota to catch his needling grin. “Doctor’s orders, right?”

Momota’s expression twists into a weak scowl. “Oh, fuck off!” 

He turns around and starts back for the bow anyway.

Ouma’s sharp bark of laughter carries back over to him on the warm evening breeze as he goes.

Even as he gathers the bow and un-sticks all of Ouma’s weird tar-tipped arrows from the tree, Momota finds himself oddly pleased with himself. It’s not that he completely understands Ouma now, not entirely. It’s just that maybe he has a better idea of what he’s hiding underneath all those layers of his. 

Getting to know Ouma isn’t the impossible feat he might have thought it was just a few hours ago. It’s just one that might take a little time and a lot of patience. A little trust, too. It’s a two way road, that kind of trust, but hey—they’ve got a long trek to the Cosmos Shrine and Momota’s nothing if not persistent. 

He’s always enjoyed a challenge.

 

* * *

 

Momota Kaito, as Ouma’s come to understand him thus far, is impulsive, cocky, uncontrollable, and _loud_. He has a flashpoint temper, he speaks with his mouth full, and he’s piss poor at gambling. He picks up strays because he likes to feel needed, but also because he knows what it’s like to be left behind. He’s a murderer, but one most likely led into it by circumstances—one who still offers up prayers under his breath to those he leaves in his wake on the battlefield, and not just for show. A dunce and a brute, but still a fiercely devoted companion to those he feels have earned his loyalties, even if he hands out those loyalties far too easily.

The two of them are diametrically opposed in almost every single way, Ouma thinks as he waits for _Ad Astra’s_ fearless leader to bumble his way back through the forest and give him an absolutely loathsome boost up the wall. Still, he’ll give the guy an A for effort. His sentimentality and optimism are as naive as they are irritatingly contagious.

Pulling the vial out of his pocket, Ouma holds it up to the moonlight and sighs, watching the liquid slosh back and forth. That's the problem with staying in a group this large for this long—no matter how many defenses you put up, it’s hard not to start developing biases.

“Isn’t that right, Saihara-chan?” he mutters to the vial.

Too bad in his business, that’s only going to inevitably make things that much harder for him in the end. After all, the more biases you develop, the easier it is to let down your guard, and the more you let down your guard, the more you begin to slip up. The more you slip up, the weaker you become, and the more power you let people have over you.   
  
Ouma scowls. He won’t let anyone have that kind of control over him. Not Saihara, not Momota, not this _cursed_ Brand, not _anyone_. He won’t be that careless again. He can’t afford to be.

The night breeze carries with it the sound of Momota’s footsteps, so with a sigh Ouma quickly downs the contents of the vial, tucks it back into his pocket, and carefully slips his mask (cracked as it is) back on. 

 

* * *

 

Akamatsu enters the mess hall to a raucous chorus of screaming and expletives. 

“—‘m sure you get a lot of practice jerking people off, you fucking shit-weasel, but do me a favor and stop riding my goddamn dick so hard!”

“Wow, you’re so feisty in the morning, Iruma-chan! I’d say this is a good outlet for all that pent-up sexual frustration of yours, but you’re _really_ not my type.”

“Ahn—! Well i-it’s not like I’d fucking wanna bone down with you anyway!”

If Akamatsu wasn’t awake before, she certainly is now. Over by Toujou’s breakfast spread, Saihara catches her eye from an empty table and waves her over with a small smile. She eagerly skirts the chaos in front of her and heads to his side.

“It’s barely even an hour past dawn,” she says as she plates herself a few slices of bread and some salted trout. “What in Evren’s name has them all so riled up?”

“Poker,” Saihara supplies. “Actually no, I think they’ve switched to Blackjack.”

Akamatsu seats herself beside him and surveys the madness a table over. At the moment, Iruma has her hand stuffed half way into the plunging neckline of her shirt as Momota futilely tries pry it away, yelling all the while that she can’t hide her cards there. Ouma cackles as he eggs the scuffle on. Hoshi and Shinguuji both watch them in silence—the former with vague disinterest, the latter with unsettling curiosity. There’s only five of them gathered over the cards, but they’re certainly making enough noise to fill up the entire hall. 

“If I had known that card games were all it took to get people up and at it in the morning, I would have dropped some copper for a couple decks ages ago.”

Saihara hums thoughtfully, taking a sip from the steaming mug in his hands. “I wouldn’t be too optimistic about this just yet,” he says.

As if to punctuate his point, the air is suddenly pierced by a loud shriek that warbles off into a thoroughly uncomfortable moan.

“Wow, congrats on finally reaching second base, Momota-chan!”

“Sh-Shut the fuck up, that was all her fault!”

Akamatsu ducks her head into her palms and rubs two fingers into her temples. She can feel a headache building. “Yeah, maybe this is better suited as a one-off thing.”

Saihara shoots her a sympathetic smile.

“Anyway, enough about that,” Akamatsu says, turning. “Are those today’s briefings you have there?” 

Saihara follows her gaze to the sheafs of paper rolled up beside his empty breakfast dishes. He nods, “We’ll see what everyone thinks, but I believe the plan for the day is a solid one. Momota-kun helped me with the finishing touches before breakfast.”

Akamatsu’s eyebrows shoot up. “Really? What’d you have to do to get him out of his tent so early?”

“It was something of a trade off,” Saihara says with a small, secretive smile.

Akamatsu hums, tucking her grin into her palm as she leans it against the table. “Cryptic. You know, you show more and more of that clever side of yourself with every passing day. ”

He turns to her, eyes wide. “Ah, sorry?”

“Don’t be,” she says, eyes crinkling at the corners. “I like it.”

Saihara flushes and his gaze darts away. His hands start to play with the ends of his oversized coat-sleeves. Akamatsu would love to pluck each of those fingers away and hold them herself, if only to convince him he didn’t have to rely on such nervous ticks. Instead she settles for watching the pink creep up the apples of his cheeks and continues on with her breakfast.

The peace of the moment is broken far too quickly. “That fucking does it!” Iruma shrieks, voice echoing like a firecracker through the hall. Akamatsu winces and looks up to find her jabbing a finger in Hoshi’s face. “He’s gotta be gaming the system somehow, I fucking know it!”  
  
Hoshi regards her cooly. “Think what you want,” he says, reaching up to bat her hand away. “Doesn’t change the fact that you decided to hit on an eighteen against the dealer’s visible seven.”

“G-Go eat a dick, shortstack!” With that she slams her cards down on the table and turns, struggling to wriggle out from her seat on the bench. “No, you know what? Fuck every last one of you, I’m getting backup! Kiibs and his magic dragon eyes’ll catch all you cheating sonsuvbitches, just you wait!” Finally free, she storms off for the exit to the courtyard.

“Wait, can we at least have that ace you shoved down your skirt earlier?” The door to the mess hall slams shut with a resounding thud. Ouma sighs, “Aw, guess not.”

“Yeah, I’m not waiting for her to come back,” Hoshi says, folding his cards to the table. “You guys can continue if you want to, but I’ve had my fun.” He pockets the hefty stack of coins he’d accumulated and swings himself over the opposite side of the bench. 

“Wha—?” Momota startles next to him. “No, hey, don’t leave me hanging, man! Just one more round!”

Hoshi turns around as he walks off. “Trust me, you should take this out while you still have anything left to bet.” Even from far away, Akamatsu can hear the solid jingle of coins as Hoshi rustles the hands stuffed deep into his heavily-weighted pockets. 

“I’m telling you, a few more rounds and I’ll get that all back!” Momota calls after him, even as Hoshi passes through the doorway. “Hey!”

“And then there were three.” Shinguuji lifts a hand to his face and sighs. “What a shame. Apologies, but I think that I shall take my leave as well.” 

Momota practically wilts. “Come on man, not you too.”

“While it is always enthralling to watch how competition brings out humanity’s basest instincts, observing only two parties is not nearly as enticing of a prospect as observing four. Another time, perhaps,” Shinguuji says as he extracts himself from the bench. It’s hard to tell with the mask, but the way his eyes crinkle at the corners seem to attest to the unnerving smile hidden beneath. He too scoops up his decent pile of winnings along with his worn Nosferatu tome and slinks off.

Akamatsu watches as Momota, defeated, slumps down over the table. Across from him, Ouma smiles beatifically and manages to get in a few condescending pats to his head before the mercenary snaps and lunges for the offending hand. He cackles and ducks away just in time. This repeats a few times before she snorts and turns back to her food.

Saihara continues to watch them with vague interest. “You know,” she says to him after swallowing a bite of fish. “I’m sure it would put him out of his misery if you joined in.”

Saihara’s mouth twists up in a wry but fond smile. “In most situations I have the utmost faith in Momota-kun’s abilities, but in this case I think my addition to the game would only to _add_ to his misery.”  
  
Akamatsu hums thoughtfully. “Are you telling me you wouldn’t go easy on him?”

“Well if I did that, he would never learn,” Saihara quips. 

She tips her head back and laughs.

A shadow passes over her closed eyelids and she opens them again to see Ouma eclipsing the sunlight on his way to the breakfast spread. He has a skip in his step that seems to tap out in time with Momota’s whinging in the background. 

“Good morning, Ouma-kun,” Saihara says as he passes. Something about him catches Akamatsu’s attention when she glances to her left. The tactician has his elbows balanced on the table and his mug in both hands hovering at his chin. His head is just barely tipped to to the side. There’s a glint to his gaze, and she’s sure if she peered deep enough into his eyes she’d see cogs turning. 

Oh, this should be good.

Ouma skids to an exaggerated stop, arms swinging up to tuck behind his head when he turns to face them. “Mornin’, Saihara-chan! Akamatsu-chan! Up for a little game of cards?”

“Sorry, I had enough of that in the barracks as a trainee to know I’ve got no talent for gambling at all,” Akamatsu replies.

“Not like that’s stopping Boy Wonder back there,” he says as he tips his head back to where Momota is trying and failing to riffle-shuffle the deck. The cards explode out of his hands and curses fly from his mouth as they watch. When Akamatsu doesn’t change her stance, Ouma shrugs, unruffled. “But whatever, suit yourself! Thankfully blackjack’s got a two player minimum, and that means more money for me in the end. I’m gonna bleed Momota-chan dry!”

“Sounds fun…,” Akamatsu says around a wincing smile.

“You seem to be in high spirits today, Ouma-kun,” Saihara cuts in. His eyes never move from the trickster as he blows the steam away from his tea.

Ouma rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet. “What are you talking about? I’m always a ray of sunshine.”

“Well then maybe you’re just shining a bit brighter today than usual,” Saihara says with a shrug. Even so, his eyes remain laser-focused on Ouma as he sips at his mug.

“Oh, you and your flattery,” Ouma says, lowering one hand to coyly swat in Saihara’s direction. After a second, the hand drops to the table and Ouma leans forward on it. “Oh, that does remind me,” he says slowly, leaning in until he’s eye to eye with Saihara. “I wanted to tell you how impressed I was last night. Siccing Momota-chan on me? I never pegged you to as the kind to use such underhanded methods to get my attention. Gotta say, you really know how to woo a criminal mastermind.”

Saihara remains mostly unfazed, the smile on his face belying the sharp, analytical glint in his eye. “I’m just glad he found you last night after you disappeared.”

Ouma’s smile goes a little tight at the corners. “Yep, he’s as persistent as the plague, and just as charming!”

With that, he reaches his free hand deep into one of his tunic pockets and produces a small glass vial. It’s hard to see, but Akamatsu can just barely catch sight of a few drops of whatever liquid had been in it before remaining at the bottom. After considering the vial for a short moment, Ouma carelessly tosses it in Saihara’s direction. Akamatsu jerks to a start, but to Saihara’s credit, he only fumbles it a little on the catch. 

Saihara looks it over once and then says, cryptically, “Did it help?”

Ouma shrugs, “Beats me. You’ll just have to ask the lovely little daisies poking up through my tent bottom yourself for an answer. They seemed _so_ thirsty last night, and it would have been a shame to leave them looking so parched.”

Akamatsu feels herself begin to prickle. The nerve of this guy to waste something Saihara had prepared for him, no matter what it was. Her mouth starts to open around a rebuttal, but Saihara’s breathy chuckling stops her. 

“Maybe I will,” he says around an exasperated but still honest smile. “Enjoy your game, Ouma-kun. It was a good idea, bringing those cards out.”

Ouma leans back. “Eh, the whim struck me by chance. Noticed I was running a bit low on funds for my liking and and most of our cohorts are dimmer than a simple Shine tome. Why pass up the opportunity for some easy cash, y’know?”

And just because Akamatsu is watching him so carefully, she manages to catch the small, sly tug of Saihara’s mouth when he says, “Really? Momota-kun told me _he_ was the one to suggest the game.”

Ouma’s gaze goes sharp, as do the edges of his smile. “Ah yes, your little morning pow-wow. Momota-chan mentioned something about that. What else did he say, hmm? Care to spill the beans?”

Saihara shakes his head. “Nothing much, only that he was able to find you last night while you were doing target practice and that he brought up the idea of cards on your way back. Why, should there be something else?”

There’s an awkward beat of silence before Ouma’s cheeks balloon out and his hands ball up into fists at his side. “The nerve of him, trying to steal all my credit! Mercenaries, I tell you. Not a lick of honor among the whole profession.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you’re one to talk about honor,” Akamatsu deadpans, unable to help herself.

Ouma turns his sly smile her way. “Takes not having something to know if someone else has got it or not, y’know? Like riches, or food, or magical destinies.” He taps a finger to his temple. “I’m very perceptive about these sorts of things.”

Saihara sets down his mug and folds his hands across the table. “It sounds like you’re saying you and Momota-kun are alike, in some ways.”

It’s innocuous enough of a question, but something still shifts. Ouma’s expression goes slack and, almost unbidden, his eyes dart over to where Momota is still puzzling over the cards. The air hangs heavy with something Akamatsu can’t place. She glances between Ouma and Momota, and then Ouma and Saihara, and suddenly feels like she’s missed something about this entire conversation, like they’ve been speaking in a veiled language that sounded right until she thought about the words long enough to discover they were gibberish all along.

Ouma eventually turns back to Saihara with a wry, cryptic smile. “Well,” he says with a lazy shrug. “You can spend all day arguing the differences between a crow and a raven, but they’re both still the same _corvus_ in the end.” 

Akamatsu feels more lost than ever. She opens her mouth to ask what he means, when a voice calls out from the other side of the hall, “You planning on coming back here sometime this century, Ouma?”

Just like that, Ouma’s face breaks out in its usual half-moon grin. “Aww, seems poor Momota-chan has grown bored without me. Ah, to be so simple and self-important.” He turns, bringing up a hand to cup his mouth. “Don’t get your panties in a twist, dear, I’ll be there in a jiffy!” he calls out over his shoulder to the mercenary. 

As Momota squawks out his protests, Ouma turns back to quickly snag the last remaining piece of bread off Akamatsu’s plate and then salutes her as he bounces back away from their table. “Anyway, I’ve got a wager to win, so enjoy the rest of your breakfast!”

Akamatsu futilely reaches out for the last remains of her food, but decides it’s not worth it. Instead, she watches Ouma skip back to his table and, as Momota starts to chew him out, stuff the pilfered piece of bread into his open mouth. 

“Okay,” she says to Saihara as Ouma sweeps the messy pile of cards out from in front of Momota (currently struggling to choke down the rest of his half-chewed mouthful) to perform a perfect shuffle. “Yesterday Momota-kun was half ready to throttle Ouma-kun, and now here they are playing cards? And using _nicknames_?” She turns her suspicious glare on the tactician. “Spill it: what did he _really_ tell you this morning.”

Saihara smiles weakly and waves his hands in front of him in a placating gesture. “He didn’t tell me anything, I swear. I’m just as taken aback by this as you are.”

She cocks one eyebrow at him and softly jabs a finger into his chest. “You don’t seem all that taken aback.”

Saihara flushes briefly at the gesture, but seems to tamp it down with a short cough. “I… had my suspicions.”

She pulls her hand away and sits back. “So you knew something was up?”

“It’s more like…,” he trails off. His brow furrows as he appears to carefully choose his next words. “As you know, Ouma can be… difficult to get through to, sometimes.”

Akamatsu snorts.

“ _Most_ of the time,” Saihara amends. “So it can be difficult, in turn, to get him to comply with things he doesn’t want to do. Even if it might be for his own good.”

“It doesn’t take a genius to figure that out,” she says. “So I know there’s more to this deduction than you’re letting on.”

He throws a brief, pleased smile her way before he looks back across the room. “I may have a good relationship with Ouma-kun, but there are things even I can’t convince him into. He can be very stubborn, in that way.” Saihara’s smile takes on a fond slant. “Momota-kun can be similarly so.”

Akamatsu puzzles over his words for a minute, then pauses. “An unstoppable force meets an immovable object,” she says as realization dawns on her. 

“That’s one way of putting it,” Saihara says. “I thought I might be able to get a more concrete answer out of Momota-kun this morning to find out what had happened, but he was… less than forthcoming, oddly enough.”

He pauses to take another sip of his tea and gather his words. As he does, he watches the pair with careful eyes. “So yes, it’s… certainly strange to see such a dramatic change in such a short period of time, but I’m sorry, I don’t have anything more to give you in terms of an explanation. I have a feeling the only way we’ll ever find out what happened is if one of them eventually deems it necessary to tell us.”

Akamatsu sighs and slumps back in her seat. She tucks her chin into her hand and turns to watch the show. “What are the chances of that, you think?”

“Slim,” Saihara huffs lightly. “You know what they say…“

Over at the blackjack table, Momota snatches the deck back from Ouma and then deals them both their hands. He regards Ouma with a suspicious scowl, then dips his head down to glance at his face-down card. The grin that breaks out across his face as he throws down his coins is absolutely feral in its enthusiasm. Ouma’s own smile is a bit more devious, but it’s plain to see his own intrigue shining through. 

Two odd sides of a mirror. A mercenary and a rogue. Crows and ravens.

Akamatsu finishes Saihara’s thought with a small smile, “Honor among thieves.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's the end of this particular saga! Like I said in the last part, [whatdidshedraw](http://archiveofourown.org/users/whatdidshedraw) and I have a lot of ideas for this universe, but they will more likely be made into one-off fics like this one that build the universe piece by piece rather than one large, ongoing story. 
> 
> This was a labor of love, so thanks to everyone who commented or left kudos on the last part. I wasn't sure if this niche crossover would alienate readers or not, so seeing it connect with so many people really meant the world! As always, I'm happy to answer questions about the universe here in the comments or at [my tumblr](http://devicing.tumblr.com).


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